Phi Collins, Master of Ennui

Yesterday I made a quick trip to the supermarket and lo and behold, Phil Collins' "One More Night" was playing over the PA. I laughed to myself because I think this song has been Muzak ever since it was released in 1985. 

As I browsed the produce and shelves I realized there's good reason for its staying power as musical grocery store wallpaper. Grocery stores are melancholy places, at least in my estimation. (The Clash and Allen Ginsburg agree with me.) The bright lighting and array of consumer products feel like a false promise of contentment. All the aisles of food weirdly remind me of my mortality and the impermanence of existence. So many uprooted plants and so much dead flesh. The low emotional ache of that Phil Collins song was just perfect.

Phil Collins was an unlikely pop star, a short stocky balding guy who had been a drummer for a prog rock band. His voice is warm and distinctive, but hardly overpowering. But that warmth of his voice and of his persona are key. He was not an otherworldly figure like Prince, Madonna. or Michael Jackson. He was a divorced dad who liked Hawaiian shirts and corny jokes.

He was also able to channel the daily ache of modern life, that low level ennui in the background of our souls. I think smart phones and social media are so addictive because they drown out that tinnitus of the soul so effectively. Back in the 80s and 90s we were stuck without this aid in all of those idle moments -like grocery store shopping- when our minds might decide to replay our regrets on repeat. Phil Collins' music was made for those moments in ways that other pop songs weren't.

Here's his top five most aching songs, perfect for contemplating existence at the grocery store, being stuck in traffic, or easing the dread of a dental appointment.

One More Night

I already mentioned this one, which is just straight up melancholy. "I can't wait forever" feels like an existential cry of despair.

Against All Odds

"Against All Odds" was described by the dear departed Yacht Rock podcast as prime "Divorce-core." He's putting it all out on the line here. "Take a look at me now/ It's just an empty space" is middle-aged depression at its most real. 

Take Me Home

This might be Collins' most affecting of all of his songs. If you've ever been exiled or had to travel far from home you will immediately understand this song. There's a poignancy to "Please take me home" as opposed to "I want to go home." It's that feeling that you have no control over your situation. Evidently it was sung from the point of view of someone in a mental institution. Heavy stuff for a guy in a Hawaiian shirt and fedora.

Misunderstanding

I know this is cheating, because it's a Genesis song. However, I think Collins was using it to set the template for his sad sack solo hits. It's about someone who gets stood up for a date and then ghosted. (Yes, that happened before cell phones, too.) But perhaps the misunderstanding is rooted in the fact that we are all windowless monads, inherently unknowable to each other.

In the Air Tonight

This song has had the most staying power of all of Collins' work, mostly due to the drum break, which is one of the great all time surprises in pop song history. Let's not forget the lyrical content, so full of heartache, betrayal, and angst. It's like something out of a Joy Division song, but the edges sanded off that it can play while being put on hold with the insurance company.

Five Songs To Hate Your Job To

This Labor Day I've been thinking about a compelling blog post by Madwoman With a Laptop I recently read in praise of quitting one's job, one's academic job particular.  It rightly points out that quitting can be both an affirmation of oneself and a refusal to keep putting up with the usual bullshit.  In today's labor environment, most workers don't belong to a union, lack job security, and are constantly being squeezed by their employers.  Real wages have been stagnant for decades.  In many professions, like teaching and higher education, the work is being de-professionalized and casualized, with educators losing authority and status along with taking pay cuts.  To stand up and say, "screw you  assholes, I fucking quit!" is one of the few weapons the American worker has to fight back with.  Most people, unfortunately, do not have the ability to so easily give up their jobs, and must remain shackled to them, losing a bit of their soul every time they punch the clock.  When I was luckily able to leave academia for a much better and more fulfilling job as an independent school teacher, I felt completely liberated.

That said, I've had my share of shit jobs in my life, and these five songs were all coping mechanisms.  There are plenty of songs that celebrate workers as everyday heroes, and they tend to have an optimistic tone even if they discuss the travails of the workaday world. (Pat and the Blenders' "Hard Workin' Man," Huey Lewis and the News' "Working For A Living," Merle Haggard's "Working Man's Blues," Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" etc.)  That's all well and good, but working is much more about drudgery than heroism.  That's why they call it work, right?  Here's five songs to hate your job to:

1.  Johnny Paycheck, "Take This Job And Shove It"
This is the true worker's anthem, a cathartic exercise in wish fulfillment.  Note that the singer of the song does not actually tell his boss to "take this job and shove it," but rather fantasizes about doing so.  This is reality for most workers: they want so badly to tell their superiors to go to hell, but can't bear the financial cost of doing so.

2.  Bob Dylan, "Maggie's Farm"
The Bobfather might metaphorically be speaking of his own emancipation from the hidebound world of folk music, but the literal meaning of the song concerns telling a tyrannical boss off.  Around the time I left academia I would blast this song in my apartment, and it felt soooo good.

3.  Tennessee Ernie Ford, "Sixteen Tons"
This one's for my grandpa, who was a working man all his life.  I remember as a kid, when he was almost 80 years old, coming home from his job at the gas station where he still had to work long after age 65.  Cancer struck pretty early into his "retirement," which was so short that it hardly deserves the name.  He came from Missouri, and loved Tennessee Ernie Ford.  Like the character in the song, my grandpa once lived in a company town where he was at the mercy of the company store.  This song is a a classic working-class lament: you bust your back smashing the coal face every day only to end up even deeper in debt than when you started.  It's a scenario that's still sadly relevant today, even if the mineshafts have turned into cubicles and cash registers.

4.  Bruce Springsteen, "Factory"
This dirge is told not from the point of view of a worker, but his son, who sees his father being gradually ground down over the years by his factory job.  "It's just the working life" he sighs.  I've seen so many people close to me seem physically and spiritually beaten by their jobs, and those who have retired are suddenly so much happier and healthier.  The awful situation for today's workers, who have so little voice and are constantly being squeezed and pushed to the breaking point, is doing untold damage to the health and souls of so many people in this country today.

5.  The Smiths, "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now"
The whole song isn't about working, but these lines just say it all:

"I was looking for a job
And I found a job
And heaven knows I'm miserable now
Why do I spend valuable time
On people who don't care
If I live or die?"

Five Best 70s Outlaw Country Songs

As all y'all can probably tell from my "Track of the Week" selections recently, I've been listening to a lot of classic country music these days.  That musical itch also pushed me to pick up Michael Streissguth's book Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville, a look at the "outlaw country" movement of the 1960s and 1970s.  Reading that book is a reminder that conflicts over the nature of country music between the twin poles of "pop" and "traditional" have been with us for quite some time.  Since at least Garth Brooks, the "pop" side has dominated country music to the point that Tom Petty has aptly described it as "bad rock with a fiddle."  That had a lot to do with my rejection of country growing up; it just sounded like sappy, overproduced crap when compared to hip-hop and grunge.

Unlike today, however, middle of the road country music in the 1970s faced a formidable outlaw insurgency by artists influenced by the counter-culture, and who declared independence from Nashville's rules and strictures.  This is the kind of country music that made me love a genre I used to loathe.  Here are the five best (or at least my favorite) outlaw country songs of the 1970s.

1.  Waylon Jennings, "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?"
Jennings hit an amazing hot streak in the 1970s after getting artistic control over his records.  More than any other outlaw artist, he managed to transcend the "pop" versus "tradition" conflict in country music.  On this song he is traditional in that he name-checks Hank Williams and implicitly criticizes modern Nashville.  On the other hand, this driving song is built around a electric rock guitar and has few of country music's traditional markers.  There's no steel guitar or choruses, just a pulsating, relentless beat.  This song is ultimate proof that country music can draw from its reservoirs of tradition and still incorporate modern sounds without being derivative.  Whenever I hear this song, I hear the sound of of what might have been.

2.  Kris Kristofferson, "Sunday Morning Coming Down"
While Johnny Cash sang the definitive version of this song (as I highlighted in a recent post), it was written by Kristofferson.  A student of literature with an obvious Bob Dylan influence, Kristofferson revolutionized country songwriting by giving it poetry and lyrical sophistication.  There is no other song that can describe so vividly how a bad hangover can make you feel absolute despair and Weltschmertz.

3.  Willie Nelson, "Whiskey River"
Speaking of drinking, "Whiskey River" is probably the best of a venerable country song genre: the "I am drinking (and failing) to forget her" song.  It comes off of Nelson's killer Shotgun Willie album, which is loaded with great songs like the title track and "Sad Songs and Waltzes."  The grooving bass and driving rhythm guitar would sound at home on a soul record, another example of outlaw country's admirable ability to improve traditional sounds by borrowing from other genres.

4.  Waylon Jennings, "Old Five and Dimers Like Me"
This comes off the Honky Tonk Heroes album, perhaps the best of the whole outlaw genre and also a showcase for songwriter Billy Joe Shaver.  I've always liked to say that the older I get, the more I appreciate classic blues, R&B, and country, because these genres are music for adults with adult problems, like broken marriages, money problems, and getting old.  This ballad really cuts deep, as it articulates the feeling I have now in my early middle age that if I was ever going to amount to anything, it would have happened by now.  The way Waylon sings "An old five and dimer is all I really meant to be" with such pained resignation gets me every time.

5.  Tompall Glaser, "Put Another Log on the Fire"
Here's a satirical song told from the point of view of an ogre, a la Randy Newman.  The character is a chauvinist pig of the worst sort with a list of demands for his wife, but the last words are "put another log on the fire/ and tell me why you're leaving me."  Women like Loretta Lynn had written about crummy husbands and male boorishness before, but this may be the first feminist country song sung by a man, and a great one at that.

Top Five Songs By The Smiths

I've had The Smiths on my brain a lot over the last couple of days after reading an interview with the author of a recent book about them, which got me thinking about which album of theirs I like the best.  I've always thought of The Smiths as more of a songs, rather than album band, but I do think that Meat is Murder is the one album of theirs I spin the most.  In any case, I decided that it's been too long since I put together a list, and thought that a top five Smiths list would generate some debate (proprietor of the WCFC, I'm looking at you.)  These five are entirely subjective, of course.

1.  "How Soon is Now?"
This is the song that made me a believer, and it still holds up today.  My fifteen-year old ears perked up when I heard the wall of reverby guitars, and when Morrissey intoned "I am the son and heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar" I felt as if there was someone out there who understood me.  Johnny Marr's Dopler-effect guitars over the trance-like rhythm track still have the power to move my soul.  I still vividly remember one time I listened to this song as I drove south on Lakeshore Drive in Chicago on a clear summer morning, the sun rising gloriously above Lake Michigan, its golden light reflecting off of the buildings to my right, with the ethereal sounds of this song on my stereo.  I may have been alone, but I did not want to go home and cry and want to die.

2.  "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore"
This song is so fraught with personal meaning that it can be rather difficult to listen to, as much as I love it.  An old, dear friend and I would always put this on the jukebox and sing along on nights out at the bar in Chicago.  We would always giggle a little bit at the way Morrissey sang "Time's tide will smother you, and I will too," delivering the second line in a kind of sinister falsetto.  Whenever I hear this song, I am reminded of her, but the memories bite a little.  We had a severe falling out about three years ago, and haven't spoken to each other since.  As the man says, I've this happen in other people's lives, now it's happening in mine.

3.  "Half a Person"
When I first really delved into The Smiths as a teenager, they were a voice of understanding in a cruel and difficult adolescent world.  I was not conventionally masculine or confident, and I combined these deficiencies with an anti-social streak a mile wide.  You can probably guess that I didn't have any girlfriends, and that was certainly true.  However, I was a bit of a cracked romantic, and developed insanely intense crushes on girls well out of my league.  This simple song told by a "sixteen clumsy and shy" narrator spoke to me like nothing else.

4.  "Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before"
Apart from Keith Richards and Chuck Berry, Johnny Marr has constructed more classic riffs than any other rock guitarist.  This song might have the best riff of them all, subtle yet undeniable.  Unlike a lot of other guitarists who are more fetishized, he serves the song rather than reeling off solos.  It's also got one of Morrissey's best quips, "I crashed down on the crossbar, and the pain was enough to make a shy bald Buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder."

5.  "The Queen is Dead"
The Smiths were too understated and smart to rock out in the overt ways of other great indie bands of the time like The Minutemen and The Replacements.  They get pretty damn close with this song, however, with its punishing drums and jagged chords from Marr that sound positively violent.  It's all a great bed for Morrissey's denunciation of life in Thatcher's Britain, taunts lobbed at Prince Charles and the rest of the aristocracy, and a warning to the working class about the "pub who wrecks your body and the church who takes your money."  Unlike most Smiths songs, it goes well beyond three minutes, an extended explosion of anger, disappointment, and class resentment.  In an increasingly hierarchical and technocratic America, we need more songs like this.

Top Five "Dick Lit" Novels of All Time

Awhile back I was browsing a used bookstore, where I happened to see that it had a separate section dubbed "Chick Lit." I've heard the term used many a time to describe works like Eat Pray Love and Prep, but thought that ghetto-izing these books within a bookstore was a little silly. After all, the patriarchy being what it is, there are many "classics" of literature that speak almost exclusively to men. There's nothing wrong with books that explore the male psyche, but they ought to have their own label, too. That then got me thinking about the best Dick Lit tomes, and since I just love top five lists, here they are.

1. Frederick Exley, A Fan's Notes.

It's hard to put my thought about this book into words, since it shook me like no other. The main character, essentially a stand-in for the author, is a creative yet fucked-up alcoholic obsessed with women and the New York Giants. This book is a rumination on failure, perhaps the thing that men dread more than any other (and probably why it shook me so much.) Exley lives with the knowledge that he is not the great player on the field, but a mere fan, a schlemiel, a loser whose life is of little import or significance. That's the realization that a majority of men are forced to confront at some point in their lives, and Exley does it with brutal honesty.

2. Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye.

Although Exley wrote the ultimate Dick Lit tract, Bukowski is without a doubt the king of Dick Lit authors. His ouvre routinely celebrates the kind of boozy, unfettered, fornicating lifestyle that many men who have given up their rough and rowdy ways fantasize of returning to. Ham on Rye makes the Dick Lit list because it articulates the raw realities and unpleasantness of adolescent masculinity in its unrestrained lust, constant confusion, and ever-present violence. On top of all that, it deals with the dickiest of Dick Lit subjects, a son's hatred for his father.

3. John Updike, The Rabbit Series.

This is cheating a bit, but the Rabbit books need to be dealt with as a whole. No matter what anyone says, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is not a "typical" person; his infant child drowns in a bathtub (partly due to his negligence), he lucks into a lucrative business career, his teenage girlfriend is burnt alive in a fire, and he even has sex with his own daughter in law. That's not the point, really. Even if he's an outlier, Updike uses Rabbit to explore the destructive nature of male lust, male jealousy at its ugliest, the difficulties of fathers in relating to their sons, and what passes for "success" in the eyes of postwar white suburban American males. There is no character in literature who I have despised and loved so fervently in equal measure, mostly since his mind is rendered so vividly real and believable, misogyny and all.

4. Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint.

Roth is another king of the Dick Lit genre, and there are a whole gaggle of novels that could have made the list. I choose Portnoy's Complaint because it deals so frankly and at times disturbingly with the sexual fantasy lives of men and a taboo topic related closely to it: masturbation.

5. Nick Hornby, High Fidelity.

Unlike the American, middle-aged male angst voiced by the above authors, Hornby takes a gentler yet no less accurate approach to the modern man and his foibles. Protagonist Rob Fleming runs a record store in north London, but is still heir to the male pathologies of Rabbit and Portnoy, although to a less icky extent. He obsesses over his former loves, always makes himself out to be a victim, and engages in the ur-masculine pursuit of record collecting. The novel even more than the film embodies the perspective of the thirtysomething hipsterish man trying to figure out how to commit himself to a woman he loves without losing the freedom he prizes. Gee, I wonder why this book appealed to me so much when I first read it....