Listening to Tusk and Waiting for History to Happen

The weather in New Jersey has been damp and rainy of late, with today being no exception. That combined with the feelings of the worlds of the living and dead coming into close contact with each other that always happen around this time, has depressed my mood. (There' a reason the ancients chose this time of year for Halloween!) I mean this literally, by the way, in that my emotions are feeling less intense than I expected on the eve of such an important election. 

I feel like I am waiting for history to happen with knowledge that it will be happening no matter what in two days. I just don't know what it will look like, and instead of worrying have labored hard save my energy for what I expect to be a post-election landscape where that energy will be needed. My thoughts on this can run wild, from "this will be a blowout of such proportions that there can be no doubt" to "will it be my fate to be run over by a pickup with Trucknutz driven by a Three Percenter at a protest to save democracy?"

This week starts my first full official week of hybrid teaching at my school. I don't need to go in until Thursday, and who the hell knows what will be in store before then? I planned out all my classes this week anyway, because what else can I do?

As usual music has been a faithful emotional companion. I have been listening to Fleetwood Mac's Tusk album over and over again, pun intended. (The first track practically invites you to!) For a long time I didn't rate Fleetwood Mac because of Bill Clinton. I was in the depths of my punk phase when he used "Don't Stop" as his campaign song in 1992 and all the Boomers seemed giddy about it. I've always hated Boomer self-regard, and I'd also read that the original 70s punks were directly opposed to this kind of music. Like a lot of overly doctrinaire teenagers, I bought the fundamentalist narrative.

Years later I became more sympathetic through some friends whose music taste was so unimpeachably indie and cool that I wouldn't feel like a sellout for spinning Rumours. By that time I had also come to the conclusion that most punk rock beyond the vital core was formulaic (which is why bands like the Sex Pistols imploded at The Clash moved on to a more diverse sound.) In the midst of this discovery I was living in rural East Texas and happened upon a pristine vinyl copy of Tusk at the local Goodwill. 

It came into my life at the right time, in the midst of a personal crisis. It's a strange sounding album, full of Lindsay Buckingham's desire to learn from the punks and impress them filtered through a snowstorm of cocaine. Tusk is also the sound of the "survivor" trope of the 1970s. It's the sound of the sixties being over and drugs and excess being the only things left and now they've done their damage and failed to fill the hole. It's the sound of exhaustion, the dark night before the Reagan Dawn in the conservative narrative. For me it was what I listened to late at night while brooding, and early in the morning when I had to face another day I didn't want to see. It got me through a lot.

Back then my thoughts of dread were connected to my personal life. I was living 1500 miles from my wife. I had close family members falling ill. I didn't like where I lived and was getting bullied at my suboptimal job. Nowadays I am far happier in my personal life, but the dread is for my country and its future. I don't know if democracy is going to survive, nor how much bloodshed will take place killing it or defending it. For the next 48 hours I just need to distract myself in ways that are far calmer that doom-scrolling. 

As good friend in Texas said on a particularly tough night as we say outside listening to music, "This isn't a problem Tusk can't solve." 

Fleetwood Mac, "Dreams"

Today I went to an event after school at a local bar I had never been to before. When I got there I was happily surprised (and a little shocked) to see that this bar had a CD jukebox.

As far as I am concerned, CD jukeboxes were one the greatest human inventions, and it's a damn shame they have almost gone extinct. Their predecessor, the 45 jukebox, had a much more limited set of options, and the only songs available apart from the hits were the B-sides, usually not worth playing. The electronic jukebox that has replaced the CD version is ridiculously expensive, and often has a surprisingly limited selection. They are also very corporate and impersonal. The CD jukebox, however, was usually eclectic and reflected the tastes of the bar's owner and stuff, rather than some lame algorithm.

I fed the juke a couple of bucks, and was glad to see a Fleetwood Mac compilation. I put on "Dreams," a song tailor-made for playing on a jukebox in a quiet bar on a cold January afternoon. John McVeigh's bass never sounded more inviting, warm like the first sip of bourbon spreading through your chest. It's a song that's all mood, the bass meshing with slinky guitar textures and spooky organ, the grain in Stevie Nicks' voice adding just the right amount of grit. Like the best Mac music of the Buckingham-Nicks period it hangs in the air like a cloud of cigarette smoke in a dingy tavern, permeating everything.

Bars to me have always been places for needed escape. Under the right conditions inside those swinging doors I can feel like the rest of the world has melted away. The booze helps, but a good jukebox is absolutely essential. Especially if it has "Dreams" on it.

Track of the Week: Lykke Li, "Silver Springs"

There are rare cover versions that match or surpass the originals, and I'll put Lykke Li's cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Silver Springs" in that category.  It's one of my favorite tracks of the past year, and one I can't stop playing, despite its painful associations.

The original is one of the great outtakes of all time, dropped from the Mac's classic Rumours at the last minute due to the limited running time allowed on vinyl.  That album was famously marked by personal turmoil in the band, including the breakup of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.  Buckingham got his version of events committed to wax and turned into a hit song via "Go Your Own Way."  I hear "Silver Springs" as Nicks' response, one based more in pain rather than bitterness, a pain too raw to be fodder for the charts.  That might be the real reason, beyond album length, that this song wasn't included on the record.

I think "Silver Springs" is one of the best songs ever written from the point of view of a jilted lover, and the line "I could have loved you but you would not let me" tears into my heart.  Lykke Li's cover builds wonderfully to the emotional climax, and when she sings about how her old lover will be haunted by her memory forever, you believe it.

However, the song doesn't resonate with my experience being jilted, but rather how I cruelly treated my first love back in college.  I didn't cheat or anything like that, but I did withdraw my emotional commitment in a snap, in what must have felt to her like an emotional mugging.  I've gone on to find my one true love, but the ghosts of loves past and the sins of the heart I committed still haunt me from time to time, especially when I hear this song.

The Theraputic Powers of Side Four of Tusk

The changing of the seasons and certain music put together can conjure forth powerful memories.  I had such a moment today as I walked home from the train station in the cool autumn breeze with Fleetwood Mac's Tusk playing on my iPod.  That combination of weather and sound brought me back to the fall of 2010 when I was still living in Texas and increasingly desperate to get out of a rapidly deteriorating situation.  I spent a weekend escape with some musically-inclined friends in the Austin area, and finally had my defenses broken down regarding Fleetwood Mac.  I drove back to East Texas with a burned CD of Tusk, which led me to track down an immaculate vinyl copy at a local Goodwill for the princely sum of two bucks,

In the period between November of 2010 and May of 2011 I lived in a state of constant fear and anxiety, due to both my dysfunctional workplace and lack of prospects on the job market.  I've always used music as medicine, but it meant a lot more to me during those harrowing months than it's ever had.  When I woke up in the morning, I would often throw on record and play a single side while eating my breakfast.  With the radio full of news of the Tea Party ascendancy, my jangled nerves could no longer handle NPR.

Side four of Tusk was an old standby on these mornings; it never failed to soothe me.  Other sides of this famous double album might indeed be better, but this one still washes over me like warm water.  It starts with the disposable "Honey Hi," a typically jaunty Christine McVeigh number that sets a relaxing mood.  Perhaps it's there to put the listener in a good mood before the extreme downer of Stevie Nicks' "Beautiful Child," a lament for lost love that sounds like the thoughts that go through your mind at 3AM when you can't sleep. 

Tusk is full of avant-garde Lindsay Buckingham songs that provide sharp counterpoints to the more pop-oriented Nicks and McVeigh songs.  "Walk a Thin Line" might be the most subdued of Buckingham's tracks on this album, fitting well with side four's quiet, spooky vibe.  That spookiness gets downright surreal on the next track, "Tusk," one of the strangest songs ever to hit the upper range of the Top 40.  The USC marching band, penis references, and a lack of any discernable verse-chorus-verse structure set it apart from just about anything else on the record.  Listening to it over my morning coffee and oatmeal, it helped rouse me from my morning torpor and the inevitable dread about facing my workplace.  Side four (and the album) end on an optimistic note with "Never Forget," just the right attitude I needed to confront the day ahead.  

These days I'm a lot happier, thankfully.  I get to hug my babies before leaving on a journey to Manhattan's invigorating bustle to do a job I love.  As much as I still love Tusk, it won't ever mean as much to me as it once did, but that's probably a good thing.

Playlist: The Many Faces of Fleetwood Mac

Over the past few years I've developed a real interest in the music of Fleetwood Mac, which is awfully surprising to me, given that I always saw them as the antithesis of the hard-edged punk rock that I worshiped in my young adulthood.  Yeah, they do have a bit of that annoying odor of rich hippie narcissism about them, but the songs, musicianship, and production on their trio of late seventies records (Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, and Tusk) are unimpeachable.  They are also only part of the band's long history, stretching back to its origins in the late-sixties British blues boom.  It's prophetic, then, that the band at that time took it's name from the rhythm section of drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie, since they are the only members to last through all the various permutations.  Here's a playlist to highlight their evolution, which I hope you enjoy.

***
"My Heart Beat Like a Hammer"
Fleetwood Mac started out playing Chicago-style blues, and this track shows off the amazing talents of original guitarist and singer Peter Green.  As far as British guitarists of the era go, I will take his exuberance over Eric Clapton's virtuosic mannerly style any time.


"Black Magic Woman"
Santana's version is better known, but this is the bluesier original, and perhaps a prophecy of Stevie Nick's later membership in the band.


"Oh Well"
In the later stages of the Peter Green era, the band shifted out of straight blues into a more hard rock direction.  This song still blows me away with its contrast between the first half's start-stop roller coaster ride and the second-half's melancholy Ennio Morricone vibe.  It displays the vitality of hard rock circa 1969 before it got turned into dunderheaded headbanging mush in the course of the next decade.

"Station Man"
Green left the band before 1970's Kiln House, after which guitarist Jeremy Spencer departed to join a cult (no joke.)  This album was the first with Christine Perfect, later to be Christine McVie.  I know the least about the music from this transitional period, but I do dig this song.

"Sentimental Lady"
Soon Bob Welch joined the band, becoming the dominant songwriting influence in Fleetwood Mac's 1971-1974 period.  (In case you didn't know, he sadly took his life this June.)  He would later have a hit with this track in his solo career, but I must say I like the original best.  It's like a hipper, vibe-ier version of a Seals and Crofts song.

"Hypnotized"
Perhaps the best Welch tune, "Hypnotized" sounds like it got a lot of play at seventies singles bars full of ferns and exposed chest hair.

"Rhiannon"
Fleetwood Mac had gone through a lot of iterations but didn't find permanent success until Californians Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined up in the mid-seventies after Welch's departure.  Thus began the classic lineup we know today, and a huge string of hits.  This is among my favorites on their self-titled record, mostly because John McVie's melodic bass, Stevie Nicks' smokey voice and Christine McVie's electric piano help evoke an epically spooky vibe.

"Monday Morning"
While Nicks brought her witchy ways, Buckingham liked to rave it up a bit.  It's the first track on their 1975 self-titled album, and a kind of declaration of newfound vitality.

"Gold Dust Woman"
The story of how the members of Fleetwood Mac endured painful break-ups with each other while recording Rumours is pretty well known, and the emotional fall-out is easy to hear in the vinyl grooves.  This song is less about the pains of failed romance than the perils of chemical coping mechanisms.  It doesn't get any more late-70s than cocaine references and snaky grooves.

"Dreams"
This is the sound of 3AM after a bottle of wine and not being able to escape painful thoughts about your ex lover.

"The Chain"
The emotional devastation is laid out pretty well here, but it's also a showcase for the band's chops.  I never get tired of John McVie's bass introduction to the break at the end.

"Tusk"
Fleetwood Mac responded to their runaway success by putting out a meticulously-constructed double LP (Tusk) much beloved today by rock snobs, but less appreciated in its time.  It was much less accessible and much more experimental than their prior two efforts, and pristine copies can be found today in just about every used record store I patronize.  Perhaps since I'm a bit of a rock snob myself, I like Tusk the best.  The title track is evidence of Lindsey Buckingham's white powder-fueled mad genius at the time, containing an implicit dick joke and the USC marching band.

"That's All For Everyone"
There are plenty of poppier tunes like "Sara" on Tusk, but they are interspersed with some punk and New Wave-inflected songs by Buckingham.  This is one I like to play as a kind of lullaby for myself after a long night.

"Angel"
California music studio magic just doesn't get any better than this, or grooves any tighter.

"Little Lies"
Coming of age as I did in the 1980s, I didn't know much about Fleetwood Mac apart from this song, which is the aural equivalent of hair-sprayed bangs, and proof positive that it was all downhill after Tusk.