View from the Mountains: Music, Culture, and More

So said one of the great spokepeople for my generation, the late Kurt Cobain, in the best song off their second big album (third if you count Bleach, which I don’t), In Utero. I thought of this phrase this week because I’ve been reading a book called The Fellowship by Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman about Frank Lloyd Wright and his Taliesin Fellowship, the community of draftsmen and architects he created to carry out his work as he grew older and more popular. In a few weeks, I’m visiting Taliesin West — the studio/school Wright built in Arizona in 1937 as a vacation/winter home to complement the original Taliesin in Wisconsin — so I wanted to read up on it before I went. Last summer I visited and wrote about Fallingwater, the waterfall house in Pennsylvania, and read Franklin Toker’s excellent Fallingwater Rising, a biography of the house. Toker’s book has the reputation of being gossipy, at least by Fallingwater bookstore standards, but it’s nothing compared to The Fellowship. I’m fifty pages in, and so far Socrates, Louis Sullivan, Charles Ashbee (a friend of Wright’s), and Frank Lloyd Wright have all been outed. In addition, Wright has married Catherine Tobin, left her for Mamah Cheney, who was murdered, and hooked up with a rich older woman named Miriam Noel.

These reports all seem legitimate except Sullivan and Wright’s homosexuality, which is based on sentences like “Sullivan himself sketched male bodies in loving detail; his drawings of women, in contrast, were few and unflattering” (18), and Wright’s writing to Ashbee, “I would give much to feel you my brother still…Your friendship has been one of the lovely things of my life” (30). Not a terribly compelling case, but the real question I have is, “Who cares?” Does Socrates’ homosexuality matter? Does Wright’s heterosexuality — for which there is abundant, unequivocal proof — matter? The Fellowship pieces together shards of weak, or just plain odd evidence to show a homosexual influence in Wright’s work, but I’m not sure that exists. We know he liked women, and that gets one architectural-related sentence (the original Taliesin supposedly lays in its hillside setting the way Wright laid into Mamah Cheney). The homosexuality is titillating, sure, like peeking up Britney’s skirt, or reading Kurt Cobain’s diary, but I’m not sure it tells us anything about their work, except perhaps in Britney’s case.

I’m an obsessive fan of a few things: The Beatles, James Bond, Lost, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1970s Mercedes. I’ve read a dozen books about The Beatles because I love their music so much I want to know more about how it was made, what they were thinking at the time, how they got from “Please Please Me” to “Ticket to Ride” to “Hey Jude.” Maybe who they were sleeping with influenced their work, but I don’t think it did. Who they loved, or what they loved, maybe. If the Beatles were all gay, it doesn’t matter to me. I like them no more and no less. As a fan, I want information about the subject, but The Fellowship feels like it’s trying to show me what’s up Wright’s skirt, and if it can’t get the picture, to make up what’s up Wright’s skirt, and then draw conclusions from that made-up evidence. This same thing is going on in the Dylan movie I’m Not There. I’ll take Scorsese’s No Direction Home, which actually tells about Dylan’s music by showing us the music. I don’t care who Dylan was sleeping with unless it was Frank Lloyd Wright.

It’s getting harder not to be a voyeur of the artists and musicians whose work I love. I don’t want to be a voyeur, I just want to be a fan.

I’m not sure why I haven’t been writing, there’s been plenty going on. Here’s what I have not been writing about:

1. Attending the Appalachian Studies Association Annual Conference at Marshall University, where I heard Silas House speak on mountaintop removal, Appalachian accents, and taking pride in our mountain culture.

2. Seeing The Gourds (Austin’s favorite band) live at the Down Home. I saw them a few summers ago and was blown away. This last time was more like seeing a band you see a lot have a relaxed night. They sat down, played mostly acoustic instruments, and did a bunch of songs from bolsa de agua, which is my fave record of theirs, though I only have two.

3. Finishing this CD I’ve been working on. I got a song into the songwriting competition at Merlefest, so I’m trying to finish this CD I started about three years ago to take with me. 10 original songs, all acoustic instruments played by Ed Snodderly, Roy Andrade, Megan Gregory, and me. These guys are my dream old-time band, even though it’s not very old-timey.

4. Playing music with Clyde Edgerton, who’s written several funny novels and several funny songs, which are largely set in the South. My friend and colleague Lonny Finley and I backed up Clyde last night at the college where I teach. We did some of his originals, a John Prine, and a song I call “Late Last Night,” but some folks call “Downtown,” I guess.

5. Taking my classes on field trips. We’ve been to the Bristol Herald Courier, where the editor, Todd Foster gave a terrific candid interview; The Down Home in Johnson City, where Ed Snodderly played us some songs and talked about Appalachia and why he plays music; and the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, where Courtney Bledsoe and Catherine Bush told us about being professional writers. Courtney writes press and media packet information and Catherine writes and edits plays.

6. Receiving an envelope containing my friend Blaine’s shaved-off beard. About 12 years ago, he and I had an argument about hair. I told him he was his long hair, that he could not be without it. He said the same thing about my short hair. A short game of oneupmanship ensued, during which I dared him to have short hair for a year and he dared me to let mine grow for a year. Nothing came of that, but about 5 years later, I received an envelope filled with Blaine’s hair. He had climbed a mountain, a tall one, though I can’t remember which, and he’d cut off his hair when he got back as a challenge to me to climb a mountain of my own, metaphorically speaking, since I don’t climb real mountains unless they are in city parks. I kept that letter, though I largely ignored his challenge. Today I got another letter from him containing a ziploc bag with a beard he had recently cut off and this letter:

Brandon,

I shaved my beard and thought of when we used to bet each other. We should continue to challenge each other in some way, make each other stronger. How?

love,

Blaine

Blaine, I’ve got a few ideas.

PS. Somehow my comment bag is compromised and all my comments are folks trying to sell me watches. I’ve got a watch I’m very happy with, so I don’t need a watch. But if anyone would like to comment, please do, it would be good for morale.

My wife and I made it a year with no television when we first got married. I’d already gone the three months since my roommate, a great television watcher, had moved out. There was some moral snobbery involved. People would say, “Did you see the new commercial for thing X?” and I would reply, “We don’t have a TV,” sometimes with a grandfatherly smile, sometimes with a stern-aunty back and forth of the head. There were some economic issues. The TV we wanted, which had a 23-inch screen but the thickness of a paperback Great Gatsby, cost about a grand, which was the same as costing 10 grand to us, because there was no way we could afford it. We could have bought a cheaper TV, but we felt strongly about not having a room with a TV at the center because of the aesthetic issue. There was also the discipline issue. I have none, so if we had a TV, I would have watched it all the time. Since we did not have one, I never watched it. I listened to music or played music or read or looked at guitars on ebay.

Two years ago, caught up in the fervor of the after-Thanksgiving Friday sales and in a moment of somewhat impulsive buying, we bought the TV we’d wanted for a year for several hundred dollars less than it had been a year earlier. And we financed it no interest for six months! So now we have a sweet TV that sits on the mantle, is out of the way of everything else, and still allows us to watch movies and anything else we get on DVD because we still don’t have cable. Saying you have no cable is not nearly as hip as saying you have no TV, but there is still a little bit of moral superiority in not having any idea what is happening on American Idol or the Bachelor or the dancing shows, which all look terrible. I could see getting excited about a competition for architects, but American Idol inevitably produces songs like the one about that girl’s “Hazel Eyes.” What if at the end of American Idol, we had plans for a new Guggenheim? I’d get Direct TV.

I say all this because I’m totally addicted to Lost. My sister and her husband introduced my wife, my mom and me to it after season two, and it took about half the first season, but I’m hooked. Part of the fun of not having cable is that you have to go to other people’s homes to watch TV. This is the best way to watch TV because it gives you something to talk about with people in your life that you should talk to but don’t. The single most important activity of my college friends post-college was watching the X-Files. Our friendships now are largely based on one simple premise: on Sunday nights, we went to Burl’s to watch the X-Files. We did not miss it. We left parties (and usually returned), planned vacations, and organized weekend work around being on the couch for the X-Files. For one hour, we dedicated ourselves to glorious mindless fun with Mulder and Scully, Skinner, the Smoking Man, and whoever else was along for the ride. Even when the show went off the rails after season six, we still went, not because it even mattered what monsters Coy and Vance were fighting, but because that’s what we did, and we did it together.

Lost has given the half my family that lives in the same town the same bond. We started watching on DVD, which is by far the most pleasurable way to watch the show for several reasons: One, the episodes are 40-something minutes long, so there’s a minimal commitment. Two, if you get a dog of an episode (and you will) or a great cliffhanger (and you will), you just watch the next one. Three, the mythology stuff is ten times easier to keep up with because you see all the obscure characters often enough to remember who they are. I know that we’ll never recreate the magical experience of watching four or five episodes on a single weekend night with the family all together, but we still get together every Thursday there’s a new episode to eat and then eat dessert, and watch Lost.

As someone who is a medium-obsessed fan of Lost, I have several dozen things that I love about the show, I have several theories about what’s going on and what’s going to happen, and I also have my critiques of the show. This season has been a good one, the best since the second (which is pure genius, especially the first five episodes). The writers are running into a few of the same continuity problems and loose story threads that plagued the Star Wars films and the X-Files, but they’re at least keeping it moving this year, so I think the audience is willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. (If anyone wants to talk specifics, send me a message.) I’ve written on this blog before about poor storytelling in popular epics like the Matrix, and how beautiful the storytelling is in a series like Harry Potter. Lost falls somewhere in the middle. Their biggest fault is that they sacrifice reasonable character development and story for the sake of the shocking scene. I lay the credit and blame for the show to Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the writers and Executive Producers. If they think of a shocking moment, they pull the trigger, often without reasoning through the causes and effects of the moment. Because of this, Lost is a show built on big moments, not character as they always tell us in their regular podcast. Season three was supposed to be character driven, and it didn’t work. They literally put three of the main characters in cages for six weeks, where I guess we were supposed to learn about them or grow in our knowledge of them, but it just made the show boring. Not many TV characters are so interesting that we want to be with them while they do time. This is why there are so few shows set in prisons. We want to watch characters do and go. Like Woody Allen says to the Greek Chorus member in Mighty Aphrodite, “This is why you’ll always be stuck in the Chorus, you don’t act.”

For all my complaints with the show, I still love it, and not just out of habit. Now that we watch one episode a week for 16 weeks a year instead of 4 a night twice a week, I’ve had to pace myself and realize that the DVD watching was not reality. TV reality is slow and regular, steady and comforting. I can already see a time ten years from now when Lost replaces Star Trek: The Next Generation or the X-Files as the show on daytime cable that is always on. Like an old friend that you don’t have anything to say to anymore, you watch a minute of the show with no excitement, no commitment. You say, “I remember this one, it’s that time when…” I know that our Thursday night dinner gatherings are numbered, literally, by the episodes left on Lost, and I think there are 41 left counting this week. That connection with friends, and with family, and with the millions of other folks watching that night and posting about it online and calling each other at lunch the next day is the best thing on TV.

I was trying to piece together when I had seen Townes live. I knew the era. I was in college, and I was hanging around with Cardiff Creasy, whose family had a house in the country where I basically lived my second year of college. Cardiff and I played music together, though we were both pretty bad. He had a great song called “Troublesome Hollow Skyline,” named after Troublesome Hollow Road, the address of this country house. I had a song, too, called “Mrs. Reservation,” which I found out later was a Leonard Cohen rip off, even though I didn’t know who Leonard Cohen was at the time. So I knew about when I had seen Townes, but I had a memory of a signed CD with a date. I checked my Live at the Old Quarter, but below his signature, Townes had only drawn a landscape: mountains and a cactus. Then I checked No Deeper Blue, which was his newest CD at the time. It was recorded in Dublin and came out on Sugar Hill in 1994. It’s quite good, and has some of his best last songs on it, like “Katie Belle Blue” and “Lover’s Lullaby,” as well as his version of Cowboy Junkies’ Lament, which actually isn’t as good as theirs. But right there, in Townes Van Zandt’s own hand, on the back page of the CD booklet, it says “Townes Van Zandt 4/7/95.”

I think Cardiff told me Townes was coming to Johnson City to play at the Down Home. The Down Home is a music club in Johnson City where everyone has played and sometimes still plays. Doc Watson plays there every year and Scott Miller and Webb Wilder have regular weekends there, too. I’ve seen The Gourds there, and Nanci Griffith and Lyle Lovett have played there, and every other roots hero, but probably none as legendary as Townes. Ed Snodderly, who runs the Down Home, told me that Townes and Guy Clark started playing there in the early nineties, sometimes together, sometimes separately. I’m pretty sure it was Cardiff who heard first that Townes was coming. I don’t remember that part, and I don’t remember buying advance tickets, but I do remember that we got to the Down Home about five o’clock. The doors open at six and shows are at nine. We were the first ones through the door, and for an hour or two, the only customers in the club. We sat right in the front, so we could reach out and put our hands on the stage. We had dinner and waited. The sound man set up one stool, one vocal mic, and I think one instrument mic, but he might have had a DI. By about eight-thirty, there were maybe twenty or twenty-five people in the club, which holds about a hundred and fifty.

Since we’d been there since five, we knew that Townes was not yet at the Down Home, since there are only two doors, the front door and the stage door, both of which you can see from the house. By nine, we were getting worried that maybe he wouldn’t show. We knew he was a little haunted. A few minutes after nine, Townes walked through the front door of the club carrying a guitar. He walked straight to the stage, sat his guitar case down, opened it, and took out his guitar. He had finger picks in the pocket of his shirt, which he put on after he sat down on the stool. He said, I’ll start with this song called “Two Girls.” I remember that because at the time, “Two Girls” was one of my faves. It’s especially good on “Live at the Old Quarter.” I didn’t know what I expected, but his voice sounded rough. He often dropped the end of phrases, but he was doing it a lot, like he was running out of breath by the end of lines. His playing was idiosyncratic, too, he didn’t miss chords but the rhythm was out there. The whole package, though, Townes Van Zandt on a stool with a guitar, looking rough, singing his songs, was surreal, like seeing the real Carter Family or something. I’d spent so much time with the Townes in my head, the Townes from 1973 at the Old Quarter that the real Townes took some getting used to.

I know he played “To Live is To Fly,” and I know he played “Dollar Bill Blues,” and he played this blues song that seems to go on for about thirty minutes, but it was probably more like six or seven. At the end of that one, he said, “That was part Lightnin’ Hopkins, part the devil, and part me.” He took a break, and during the break, he just sat on the edge of the stage, which about three feet from where we were sitting. I was scared to death, but Cardiff walked right over and sat down next to Townes and started up a conversation. I eventually joined in, and I told Townes I was a big fan of his song that the Cowboy Junkies did. He told us he’d been on tour with them in the United States, and he was supposed to go with them to Canada (the Cowboy Junkies are Canadian), but he couldn’t go to Canada because there was a warrant for his arrest. At this point, I was pretty sure he was putting us on, but he said that he wasn’t allowed into Canada because twenty years before, he and a buddy were in Canada, and they were drunk, and they crashed their car though the front wall of a bar. He said they didn’t know what to do next, so they went up to the bartender and ordered a drink and waited for the cops to come. After they were released on their own recognizance, they got the heck out of Canada, never to return. I’m not sure if Townes’ picture is up at all the Canadian border crossings or not, but that’s the story he told us.

At the end of the break, after we got our CDs signed and everyone had a few more beers, Cardiff asked Townes if that old road he was always singing about was worth traveling. I couldn’t believe he asked that. We were both in college and worked at a restaurant. I didn’t know hitting the road was in the plan, but Townes looked at him and said, “You won’t make much money, and it’s lonely, but yeah, it’s worth it.” I don’t remember what songs he played in the second set until the very end. Somebody called for “Cowboy Junkies Lament,” and Townes said he’s written it, but he never learned to play it. Then he said, “I’m going to do one more song,” and somebody in the crowd yelled, “You’re not leaving here until you sing ‘Fraulein’.” Townes said, “I’m going to do two more songs,” and he played “Fraulein,” and then went straight into “Tecumseh Valley.”

Townes played at the Down Home one more time after that before he died. It was in the summer, probably of 1996, and I was out of town and couldn’t go. I heard he played about three songs and then started drawing maps on the stage wall with his fingers, showing everybody where the store was and where Tennessee was. That’s when my friend Jessica and her brother Matt saw him. Less than a year later, she called on New Year’s Day to tell me he’d died. About a month after he died, I wrote an email to Jeanene Van Zandt, Townes’s widow, and told her I’d seen him and heard some of his stories. She wrote me back and said she was so happy I’d gotten to hang out with Townes. She said a lot of people thought of him as this dark poet, but not that many people knew how much fun he was.

When I finally did go out on the road about seven years later, I found out Townes was right. It is lonely, and there’s not much money in it, and yet, at least for a while, it was worth it.

It’s Elvis’ birthday this week, which reminds me that it’s January, which reminds me that it’s the anniversary of the death of Townes Van Zandt.  I had to look up the year — 1997, but I remember the phone call from my friend Jessica Walters, one of the three people that I knew at the time who ever saw Townes live.

If you don’t know, Townes is the godfather of Texas singer-songwriters.  The term “Texas singer-songwriters” actually is a category, mostly of folks with three names like Townes Van Zandt.  There’s also Jerry Jeff Walker, Robert Earl Keen, Willis Alan Ramsey, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Michael Martin Murphey.  I’d start with Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s Spinning Around the Sun if you need an entry point.  There are also Texas singer-songwriters with only two names, and they tend to be more popular:  Guy Clark, Butch Hancock, Lyle Lovett, Joe Ely, and yes, Steve Earle, though he lives in New York City now, which is a good place for him, and Nanci Griffith.  I’m leaving out a lot, I know, like Willie Nelson and Walter Hyatt, who was actually from South Carolina, but the group above is of a piece.  They sort of go together the way that New Order, the Happy Monday, and the Stone Roses do, or maybe Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the Stone Temple Pilots.  They were all doing a similar thing, got discovered around the same time, and contined to ply their trades after the spotlight had moved elsewhere, in the Texas singer-songwriter case, the spotlight moved from Austin up to Athens, Georgia, so they stopped playing Lyle Lovett on country radio and started playing REM and the Indigo Girls on pop radio.  The era of the Texas singer-songwriter spotlight was the mid-eighties I guess, when you could hear Steve Earle on commercial radio.

Townes was neither the first Texas singer-songwriter, which I guess was either Bob Wills or Willie Nelson, nor was he the most famous, but he was the best.  He didn’t write radio songs or hits, though Merle Haggard and Willie had a hit with “Pancho and Lefty.”  He wrote poems that were set to finger picked guitar.  They are not unmusical, but they have simple repeating melodies and basic chords.  Some of them have choruses, and others just have verses.  I can’t think of a single bridge in any of his songs, though there may be some.

I think of Townes as the anti-craft songwriter.  His songs are all art, memory, and emotion.  I think because of this, he was the favorite of the Texas singer-songwriters.  Steve Earle has a famous quote about Townes being the best songwriter in the world, and he Steve says he’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in his cowboy boots and say so.  I don’t think Dylan would argue with that.  The downside to Townes, or maybe just the other side, was that he fought depression and substance abuse for years, and died New Year’s day, 1997 at age 52.

I saw Townes at the Down Home in Johnson City, Tennessee, in the fall of 1994.  I got into Townes because of a song he wrote called The Cowboy Junkies’ Lament, which is on my favorite Cowboy Junkies album, Black Eyed Man.  I was about 17 before I realized I didn’t have a favorite song, so I started thinking about what song I could listen to and never get tired of.  Townes’ Cowboy Junkies’ Lament kept coming to mind.  I never got tired of listening to it because I didn’t completely understand it.  It had a good measure of the mystery that is in a lot of his best songs.  There were these characters, and I knew I felt the same way they felt, but that’s all I knew about them.  I still love that song.

I got lucky when I went to buy a Townes album because I was in Ann Arbor, where there used to be a handful of great record stores, and I got the Tomato Records CD of Live at the Old Quarter.  This is a live show from Houston, recorded in July 1973 at a famous folk and blues club.  If you’re looking for the best Townes Van Zandt recording in existence, this is it.  Fortunately, it was rereleased as a double CD on the Charly label out of Germany in 1998.  His playing and singing is at its peak, he nails all the finger-picking parts (Texas singer-songwriters love fingerpicking guitar), and he’s funny, sober, and loose.  Because of this record, I thought all Townes’ recordings would sound great, but they don’t.  The early records are a little Nashville-y, though the songs are great, and the live recordings range from good to sad.

To be continued…

Over the weekend, I watched the Tom Petty documentary Runnin’ Down a Dream, which was directed by Peter Bogdanovich, whom I know nothing about, but has directed several episodes of The Sopranos. When I sat down to watch it, I had no idea how long it was, but after two hours the screen flashed End of Part I. I was so happy there was going to be another two hours.

In rock and roll films, The Band’s The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorsese, and the Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense, directed by Jonathan Demme, are the gold standard concert films. The Beatles’ Anthology is probably the best career retrospective, just because they had access to all that rare Beatles music and because there’s so much of it, like nine or ten hours. No Direction Home, Scorsese’s film about Dylan’s first big period, 1960 – 1966, is the first of its kind to do an in-depth retrospective about a particular period. Runnin’ Down a Dream combines thirty years of concert footage, interviews, and home movies with new interviews and a 2006 concert. What’s great about the film is that it has none of the The Last Waltz’s artsy grandeur (which I love), none of the Anthology’s press-release versions of the great Beatles myth (which I love), and none of Dylan’s obtuse rambling (which I love). The interviews and footage convinced me, at least, that with Tom and the Heartbreakers, what you see is what you get. The film even closes with George Harrison and Dave Grohl describing Tom’s greatest virtue: “he’s not full of shit.” Try saying that about Robbie Robertson, Paul McCartney, or Bob Dylan.

The Heartbreakers started in Gainesville , Florida as The Epics. Then they were Mudcrutch. In a few years they’d conquered Gainesville , made a demo, and decided to go to L.A. to get a record deal. They might have been the very last band who successfully executed this move, but they did it, and started making records. Unlike nearly every other act in rock and roll, they’ve never had quality issues. Some albums have been better than others, but they’ve all been good, and several have been Damn the Torpedoes, Full Moon Fever, and Wildflowers good. Add to that thirty years of singles like “American Girl,” “Listen to Her Heart,” “Refugee,” “The Waiting,” “You Got Lucky,” “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” “Free Falling,” “I Won’t Back Down,” “Into the Great Wide Open,” “You Don’t Know How it Feels,” and “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.”

Runnin’ Down A Dream also gets into a few famous Tom controversies like when he declared bankruptcy to get out of a bad record deal, when he fought his record company to keep prices down, the departures of original drummer Stan Lynch (“Tell Stan if he doesn’t show for the gig, we’ll get Ringo.” Stan showed.), and the self-destruction of their second bassist Howie Epstein. Tom also gets cantankerous defending Roger McGuinn from an A&R man pushing a bad song and with Heartbreakers who criticize the songs on his solo album Full Moon Fever, his biggest selling (and best) album. In the film, Tom comes across as laid back, stubborn, hard working, and honest. It’s a personality type that has endeared him to fans and other artists and kept him from buying into the mediocrity of music business-as-usual. The film gives us Tom Petty: part southern gentleman, part redneck.

Tom is not an everyman writer and musician, he’s a great writer and musician whose style is understatement. Because he’s so understated, he has that everyman persona, and so in scenes with Dylan, Roy Orbison, Roger McGuinn, and Johnny Cash, Tom is a great way in because he’s just as excited as we would be. He’s cooler than we would be, but he’s just as excited. As a rock and roll geek, several of my favorite parts are when Tom’s interacting with huge rock stars. There’s great footage of Tom and the Heartbreakers backing Dylan on “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” and crummy footage but great moments of Jeff Lynne, Tom, and Roy Orbison recording guitars and vocals on “You Got It,” which he helped write.

I’ve seen Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers twice, once in Atlanta in 1992 (Great Wide Open Tour) and once in Detroit in 2000 (after Echo). They were both big amphitheatre shows, both parades of hits and the coolest guitars ever made. Runnin’ Down A Dream ends with footage from a big outdoor show, and it’s a little bit hard to figure out what is so interesting about the guy. He’s not flashy, not loud, not scandalous, but there is something true about what he’s doing, like he believes in it, and unlike most of our entertainers, he’s not full of shit.

I left my New Yorker at the office, so I’m switching up the schedule of daily blogs to bring you the real game of the century. Whatever Frank DeFord says, Colts –Patriots was just a warm-up to the best rivalry of the new millenium, and its taking place in indie rock. In the Loretta Lynn dress, all the way from Canada, Neko Case and the New Pornographers. In the Bo-Peep gone bad, Jenny Lewis and Rilo Kiley.

Two years ago, no one would have put this rivalry together, because Neko was an alt-country singer who moonlighted with AC Newman’s alternative supergroup The New Pornogrpahers, and Jenny Lewis was just the lead singer of indie darlings Rilo Kiley.

What happened in the last two years is that these women have been in on making four really good records. In January 2006, Jenny Lewis released a solo album called “Rabbit Fur Coat” under the name Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins. If you’ve seen it in the store, you’ll remember it because the Watson Twins look like the little girls from “The Shining” grew up, became country singers, and now walk around getting Jenny’s back. People loved this record, and it’s easy to see why. The production is spare, the songs are strong, and Jenny’s a great singer. I didn’t find this record until about a year later, so I missed the bandwagon on this one, and never really got on it, though two of the hippest cats I know both gave me copies because they loved it so much. Only now do I see that “Rabbit Fur Coat” is like the engine that pulled the train of great music out of the station.

About six weeks later, Neko Case released the best alt-country record since Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and called it “Fox Confessor Brings the Flood”. It’s as good as “Time (The Revelator)”, the best Gillian Welch record. For a few months, you literally couldn’t go out to hear (or play) music around here without spending the night talking about “Fox Confessor”. Another hip friend of mine (most of my friends are hip), who has a blog called punkisrael bought this record while he was visiting, and I jumped on the bandwagon immediately. I thought that the song “Teenage Feeling” had been written by God and given to Neko to record so that I could feel love in my heart again after all these years. In fact, I loved it so much that when I was given the Jenny Lewis, I was unable to hear it as anything except a Neko rip off. I see now that I was wrong, but I also see that Neko’s record is better, because it’s trying for more. Jenny’s is clean, but Neko’s is a broadcast from the land of the possible. Round 1 to Neko.

Round 2 began a year and a half later, when Jenny’s band, Rilo Kiley put out a record called “Under the Blacklight”. For years, cool people have loved Rilo Kiley, and for years I’ve known nothing about them. It turns out that many of their old fans think this new record is a sell out and that it’s too catchy and too pop. In this case, not being a fan before has helped, because “Under the Blacklight” is smart, well-written superfine pop, and since I didn’t know it was a sell-out, I love it guilt free! It’s groovy, funny, sexy, and Jenny. I don’t know what the mix is like in her band, like if she gets to write all the tunes or what, but she’s as much a presence on this record as on the solo one, and for me, the cooler-than-thou, slightly naughty, fun-loving clubber Jenny Lewis is easier to swallow than the lonely crooner Jenny.

Here’s where we have to stop to say that this competition isn’t exactly fair because Jenny and Neko are not really apples to apples. Jenny leads a band and made a solo record. Neko has a solo career and sings in a supergroup. So when you pick up “Challengers”, the New Pornographers new record, you won’t get as much Neko as you might like, but you’ll hear her wailing in the background, sweetening the lush harmonies, and singing lead on my early favorite, “Go Places,” which was written by God and given to AC Newman who gave it to Neko to sing so I could feel love in my heart again after all these years. Also check out “Adventures in Solitude” and “All the Old Showstoppers” while you’re online downloading it. Even if it’s not as much Neko as the previous New Pornographers record, the excellent “Twin Cinema”, on which she wrote a few tunes, “Challengers” is still the best biggest power pop of the year. I’m not sure what the Foo Fighters do, because I’ve never listened to a single one of their songs, but what they should do is a record of New Pornographers covers, because the world would love this music if they ever heard it.

Comparing “Under the Blackligh” to “Challengers” really is apples and pears, because the bands are trying for, and achieving two different goals. “Blacklight” is a small group playing with space and dance grooves and club life, these are admirably modest goals. Like Jenny Lewis’ solo album, the new Rilo Kiley album completely succeeds at hitting the mark, however narrow the mark might be. Like “Fox Confessor”, “Challengers” shoots for the stars in tone and sound. “Challengers” is less focused, but also grander.

Round two goes to Jenny so the bout is a split decision. We are the real winners because have gotten four solid, completely listenable and innovative records in two years from two songwriters who will hopefully be making records for years to come.

From the day Radiohead released OK Computer in 1997 until they released Kid A in 2000, they were, by nearly everyone’s stick, including mine, the best band in the world. This is an exclusive club of folks like The Beatles, The Stones, Led Zep, Nirvana, U2, Radiohead, maybe the Police, and I would argue Wilco, that have released such great pieces of album rock, or put on such incredible live shows that they are, for a time, peerless. OK Computer was so good that it made The Bends, which was already good, even better, something like the way that Sgt. Pepper made Revolver even more impressive. Many folks now prefer Revolver or The Bends, even though Sgt. Pepper and OK Computer are the more fully realized works. Radiohead decided, probably wisely, that they could not top OK Computer and that they did not want to try, much like U2 before them, who followed up the brilliant Achtung Baby with Zooropa. Yes, that’s the one with “Lemon” and “Numb,” and either of those words would have been a fitting title for the record. Instead of creating more beautiful ambient guitar songs, they took the synths-and-beats road and released Kid A.

Kid A starts promisingly enough, with “Everything in its Kid A was not just no OK Computer, it was not as good as OK Computer. Even in its best moments, its beauty is encased in ice, and Thom Yorke, who is at his warmest distant, sounds like he would rather do anything except connect with the listener. I’m fine with the idea, but because of that, this is no one’s favorite album. Amnesiac was described as the leftovers from Kid A, and it lived up to that description. It’s a little weirder, slightly warmer, and well named, because nearly everyone has forgotten about it. “You and Whose Army” and “Knives Out” are the brightest spots. Perhaps by Amnesiac, Radiohead had earned our trust enough to ask us to take a chance, but remember that once the Beatles earned our trust they released the White Album. Like the White Album, Kid A and Amnesiac are really one batch of songs, and like the White Album, Kid A and Amnesiac show a band getting out from under itself with mixed results. Unlike the White Album, Kid A and Amnesiac are not great.
That brings us around to Hail to the Thief, which was released in 2003. This one kicks off with one their best tracks ever, “2+2=5,” and that’s all I can remember of that one.

As if sensing they were growing less relevant by the minute, and afraid of waking up to find themselves following REM and Oasis into interviews where they say things like, “This album is the best work we’ve done in years,” Radiohead finally pulled something beautiful out of their collective bum last month by releasing a new record that you can’t buy in a store, but that you can get free if you go to their website. Having bought the last two records, I decided to pay absolutely nothing for In Rainbows, the new ten song set. I felt like they owed me. We’re even. In Rainbows is quite good, and even better, it is fun to listen to, the way that OK was fun about the tenth time through. The mixes are crazy, like the great loud rhythm electric guitar on “Bodysnatchers.” Thom’s right up in the mix, which you may find unsettling since many of the songs contain lyrics that sound as if they were written by a human being and not a coked up Speak and Spell. “Faust ARP” has double tracked acoustic guitar backed by a big string section, and if I may invoke the Fabs once more, sounds like a good John Lennon song in its odd changes and uneven meters. There’s a song near the end called “House of Cards” that sounds like if robots played R&B, which works.

The biggest thing that is back for me on this collection is melody, which is why I fell for OK in the first place and why I like The Bends so much. Like The Beatles (last time), Radiohead’s real gift is melody. Their early anthem, “Fake Plastic Trees,” is a beautiful song. “Nice Dream’s” melody is, in fact, dreamy, and “Black Star” is so singable it could be a James Bond theme. Nothing on In Rainbows approaches the transcendent pop of “Let Down” or “Karma Police,” but it is a return to form in many ways. The guitar is back, the melodies are back, and I swear in a few of the tunes I hear something in Thom’s voice that resembles human emotion.

After hearing from JK Rowling that Dumbledore was gay, many of us felt as lost as a disco ball in high weeds. “Why would she say that?” I wondered, not as in “How could this be?” but as in “What difference does it make?” To most of us, it makes no difference. But I think about Rowling, and her timing, and I think, if it makes no difference, then why mention it? Or, if it makes no difference, why keep it a secret for so long? I don’t think Rowling’s timing is arbitrary. If this announcement would have preceded the seventh book or one of the films, there would have been panic in the streets of some southern towns. It’s not uncommon to meet someone in my town that hasn’t read the Potter books because the books are about magic. If one is morally opposed to a book in which kids do magic, imagine the ire against a book in which kids do magic and guys do guys. By waiting until the media and consumer frenzy about the seventh book lulled, Rowling gets the devotion of the gay community and a dig at her detractors on the right without the backlash at the bookstore.

The best thinking I read on Dumbledore’s gayness came from Edward Rothstein in the New York Times, who took what I’m finding is a common approach to this most fabulous collision of homosexuality and magic since Siegfried and Roy: denial. Rothstein has two theses: one, that Dumbledore types like Gandalf are asexual, so they’re neither gay nor anything else. He argues that they are so focused on higher callings like defeating evil that they don’t have the time or the energy for physical desires like sex or redecorating. The more I think about it, the more this rings true. Can you picture a sexual Yoda? He’d be like Stripe from Gremlins.

Rothstein’s even better thesis is that the text, not the author, has to define characters. This is what I would call the gay is as gay does thesis. He writes,
Of course it would not be inconsistent for Dumbledore to be gay, but the books’ accounts certainly don’t make it necessary. The question is distracting, which is why it never really emerges in the books themselves. Ms. Rowling may think of Dumbledore as gay, but there is no reason why anyone else should.

This is from a paper that ran a headline the very next day on the front page that read Gay Enclaves Face Prospect of Being Passé This was on the front page of the New York Times. It was an article describing how gay districts like the Castro in San Fransisco are not the best places for Halloween parties anymore. I just watched All the President’s Men, in which Woodward and Bernstein, played by Redford and Hoffman, can’t get Watergate stories on the front page of the Washington Post, but “Gay Enclaves Face Prospect of Being Passe” makes the front page of the Times.

Looking at the texts, the entire Harry Potter universe is asexual. Only in the seventh book are there any good wand jokes. After reading the seventh book, my friend Robin said the biggest mystery in the book is how three teenagers spent eight months camping in the woods and no one had sex. The only gay allusion I can think of is the name Flitwick, which must mean something.

What Rothstein and Rowling’s timing say, I hope, is that it really makes no difference. Dumbledore is Dumbledore whether he is gay or straight. The idea that gay defines identity unfairly values sex. For some reason straight people are free to be people, but gay people have to be gay people. One is not merely one’s sexual preference, thank God.

Stunt
November 4th, 2007

This week, a new blog each day Monday through Friday. Topics below:
Monday: Dumbledore.
Tuesday: Radiohead.
Wednesday: Sasha Frere-Jones’ (music critic for the New Yorker) assertion that new indie music suffers from a lack of black influence.
Thursday: Neko Case and New Pornographers vs. Jenny Lewis and Rilo Kiley
Friday: A topic to be determined by the events of this week. Hopefully, something with an Appalachian theme, to get back to my blogging roots.
Caveat: the point of this blog is to encourage the reader to check out something good they may not know about. Since there will be so many blogs this week, I will likely run out of new cool things and have to resort to criticism. Those of you with highly-developed cultural sensitivities may want to avoid Monday and Wednesday.