#10: Thrift Shop -- Macklemore & Ryan Lewis featuring Wanz (2012)

OK, so this is a sort of change up. A lot of students at my last school had a big thing for this song (the ones who were not infected with Gangnam Style or Call Me Maybe or that damned One Direction crap) and I really like it. Every so often in those heady days of September and October, in between yelling and students not taking me seriously, I would hear snippets of this song from IPhones that should not have been out or furtive whispers of the hook between students.

I'm gonna pop some tags
Only got twenty dollars in my pocket

 I can't decide whether or not the song is making fun of either of the following things:

1. Thrift Shops -- I wouldn't be OK with this as a trip to Goodwill, Salvation Army or Savers (Value Village if you are up in the Great Northwest) is one of the only times left in life where one can find an absolute treasure. Such as the Burberry coat I found at the Value Village for $29. Do I wear it now that I live in California? Does it matter?

I'm I'm I'm hunting looking for a come up
This is fucking awesome

2. People who spend $50 for T shirts -- as a general rule, I am OK with this. I buy my t shirts at Target for six or seven bucks and I think that is too expensive. I think my hatred for "retro" and "brand name" started back in the early part of the last decade. On one of my very infrequent trips to shopping malls I saw a shirt that said "Know Your Roots" hanging up in the window of, you guessed it, Hot Topic. Above this command was a picture of...........an eight bit Nintendo controller. I stopped and stared, mouth agape and began to walk slowly over to the poor 16 year old in black jeans. I got to within ten feet when he sensed my murderous rage and he ran for his life.

"YOU WORTHLESS BASTARDS! WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO ATARI! I'LL GIVE YOU ASTEROIDS YOU IGNORANT PIECES OF SHIT! FUCK YOU IN THE FACE! IF YOU HAD ANY SORT OF SOULS GOD WO-"

I was then tackled by 6 security guards and banned from the mall, which is what I wanted in the first place. I chalked it up to a lack of medication and fear of being over 30. They didn't buy it and I haven't been back. The price tag on that 1980s-billboard-on-a-shirt was over $20.

I really want to think that this song is making fun of the people who swear by retro clothes and then buy non-retro clothing with retro totems on them. You can even buy Frankie Says Relax shirts now, so ol' grandpa can show his six year old how he and the ladies got down in 1983.

Sheeeeeit

The kids who loved this song wore those obnoxious skater type shirts but never got on a skateboard. Or they wore 49er jerseys and hats. Or they were enamored with their iPads and never paid attention to anything. I'm not sure what this means, but it means that my liking for this song is overrode by the painful memories of professional failure. Of not getting to kids, which is my job. Our school failed because of no buy in from students and parents. Everyone had a role to play in its downfall. I could have been more present and been more involved. The students could have taken it seriously. Many did not, but the few that did got something out of it.

That's easy for me to say when you have some students living on the streets for three days, some drinking before school even starts, some smoking pot in the bathrooms during school. "Take this seriously!" Why should they?

They be like "Oh that Gucci, that's hella tight"
I'm like "Yo, that's fifty dollars for a t-shirt."

That's why. I'm not saying spending $50 for a t-shirt is wrong. It's just stupid. If the Burberry example from above was $59 instead of $29, I would not have bought it. At $29, it's a come up. So keep putting out $150 for that Kaepernick Jersey, kid,  and the $50 for the alternate home lid while you fail classes. Am I bitter? Yep. Am I experienced? More than you.

#9: Solsbury Hill -- Peter Gabriel (1977)

This song in an interesting one, written as Gabriel's first single after he left Genesis following the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour in 1975. It shows up in roughly 67,000 movies but has a unique impact on me for various reasons. Craig Crawford got me interested in Peter Gabriel's music right about the time that I became interested in Dungeons and Dragons (again, I fault Craig and Scott). This was roughly 1982 or 1983, I think. I played D&D all the time and bought every module that my allowance would allow. I also listened to the radio constantly while this was going on giving me an encyclopedic knowledge of 1980s music and 1960s one-hit-wonders. The 1960s were considered "classic rock" in the 1980s and Elvis and the Everly Brothers were considered "Oldies". I vaguely understood from Craig that Gabriel was once in a band now fronted by Phil Collins, and thought Gabriel was perhaps the oddest person I had ever encountered. I submit the video for "Shock the Monkey" as proof.

I had heard Solsbury Hill several times before 1990, but it never resonated until that year. For what reasons I do not know. My Dad left (of his own steam or mine or Mom's is a bit of conjecture by all parties) to live with another woman whom I did not know existed until he died in 2001. I am not sure what happened to him after he left us. I saw him for brief periods over the next 7 years, usually turning the other way when I saw him in a bar downtown. In 1990 I felt like I was going somewhere. I was in a bunch of plays, I was popular at school and doing reasonably well (for me a 3.0 GPA was reasonably well) and I had my own basement at my folks house.

This lead to screenings of classic films: Evil Dead and Evil Dead II were favorites. There was D&D every Sunday at Craig's house which would continue for the next 6 or 7 years. I was enjoying myself capitally. I went on dates....with actual girls! On June 9 I went out with a young woman to see the horrific horror film The Guardian and had pizza; she drove a green Toyota and has not gotten rid of me since.

In the back of my head, I knew all of the successes of the year to be built on sand. This is the great problem with my emotional and mental state: I do not deserve success and it will soon be taken away because of my attitude/real ability/exposure as a complete and absolute fraud. I guess this song gets at the heart of that voice that started whispering in my ears in the 1980s and was roaring at the top of its lungs in 2007.

 It was like the quiet conversation and coughing during the break between movements when I was a teenager. As my time of my quitting at Iowa in 1996 it was a moderate conversation that I could talk over. I imagined that I made the right choice and trusted myself. Even though things began to work out slowly the voices became more insistent and demanding that I did not know myself.

I did not believe the information/I just had to trust imagination

By 2007 that voice and noise was the cosmic thump that drowned out all else. A 20 year retrogression from talkies to life as a silent film where the only accompaniment is Beriloz's Dies Irae as I just have to wait for my life and mind to fall apart.

Till I thought of what I'd say/Which connection I should cut

In 2007 I started a new job and thought the connection to the Churchillian Black Dog was cut. I never thought that the dog would bite the living hell out of me. That voice saying "everything you have, everything you've ever done or will do is a fraud. You deserve nothing" is a friend and speaks truth. It is the wolf howl on the Autumn night. The face to the world is not yours. You come to believe in a self that is not yours, a feeble and downtrodden thing who is powerless. Frederic Jameson wrote about the "dearealization" of the surrounding everyday world. Against all evidence, against all rational thought, I believe my life as a parade of failures. This is the fraud for all of us.

This song ends with these lines:

Today I don't need a replacement
I'll show them what the smile on my face meant
My heart going BOOM-BOOM-BOOM
Hey, I said
You can keep my things they've come to take me home

The thing that takes us home is belief in ourselves, however sparing it is and however irregular its visits to our doors. The things we leave behind in those moments are what keep us from being ourselves.

#8: Mr. Bad Example -- Warren Zevon (1991)

Warren Zevon is one of the true great American songwriters. David Letterman was fond of pointing out that he was able to find a rhyme for brucellosis in the song "Play It All Night Long" but this song is my favorite. Not because I want to necessarily be the subject of the song but that I want to be able to figure out how Zevon wrote this brilliant item. I mean, what was going on in his head and how can I get there?

Before you respond "Easy. Live at the bottom of a Gin Bottle for several years. Rinse and repeat" it is not that easy. Zevon was a true poet, and this song is he at the top of his art. There are three lyrics in this song that prove this for me:

 I got a part-time job at my father's carpet store
Laying tackless stripping, and housewives by the score
I loaded up their furniture, and took it to Spokane
And auctioned off every last naugahyde divan
Warren Zevon is the only man who has ever lived who can get the phrases "tackles stripping" and "Naugahayde divan" into one verse and make them work. Not to mention the inspired rhyme of Spokane and Divan. Good Lord, this song includes housewives, carpet samples, French Prostitutes, pauperized miners, Altar Boys and Foster's.

I'm very well acquainted with the seven deadly sins
I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in
I'm proud to be a glutton, and I don't have time for sloth
I'm greedy, and I'm angry, and I don't care who I cross
This is also a nice bit of writing, even if you need to Geek out on the English to get there. The rhyme scheme being AABB is easy, as is the alliteration on glutton and greedy. This is brilliant for the phrase "trying to fit them in" which is an awesome double entendre. Someone who is angry is also "wroth", which rhymes nicely with "sloth". So this verse covers all of the deadly sins at once, something difficult to do in four lines.

Of course I went to law school and took a law degree
And counseled all my clients to plead insanity
Then worked in hair replacement, swindling the bald
Where very few are chosen, and fewer still are called

Few men are bald and fewer still chose to be in Zevon's time. Now it is a trend. I LOVE being bald. It is so much easier than having long hair. Having had both I will never go back. Of course I can't have the long luxurious locks that once adorned my melon back in the 1990s for the simple fact that they will not grow without chemical interference that may make me impotent, give me cancer or make me think that I am Napoleon III. So what? I look better without 'em!
Keeping with the Biblical arrangement, you have a paraphrasing of Matthew 22:14 "For Many are called but few are chosen" which occurs at the end of a parable by Jesus about a King who has invited his subjects to a wedding. Several verses after is the famous "render unto Caesar's what is Caesar's" quote. In the world of the song, Mr. Bad Example is neither chosen nor called, pointing out his rapturous acceptance of the Seven Deadly Sins. That is just really informed writing. When I listen to this song it reminds me of what we all look for in our favorite authors: the reasons they are our favorites. This song is hysterical but it is also damn well constructed, and I would not expect anything else from Warren Zevon.
 

#7: Lost in the Supermarket -- The Clash (1979)

One of the best albums ever, with the following songs one after another:

Hateful, Rudie Can't Fail, Spanish Bombs, The Right Profile, Lost in the Supermarket, Clampdown and Guns of Brixton.

That's a greatest hits album......without counting Koka Kola, Wrong 'em Boyo, Death or Glory and Train in Vain. While some are partial to Sandinista, this is The Clash's best effort. Joe Strummer wrote Lost in the Supermarket while visualizing the childhood of Mick Jones. Jones sings the lead on the song. Headon's drum work on this song is crisp and wonderful without sounding urgent. The lyrics are urgent enough and Jones' delivery is perfect.

While the song is about consumerism, it gets at the horrible "suburbia" nonsense so prevalent in 1980s music by addressing the loneliness. The song always resonated with me for two lyrics:

1. I heard the people who live on the ceiling/scream and fight most scarily/hearing that noise was my first ever feeling/that's how its been all around me

Of course these were my parents! Who the hell else would it be? And it scared the shit out of me every day. While this means I did spend a goodly amount of my childhood hiding in my room it also means that I can put up with a lot of noise and concentrate. This probably leads to my ability to read for hours at a time without stopping, as I did not want to leave my room for anything (food, bathroom) because I would be in the firing line. Mom usually had the good sense to stop but Dad didn't know he was beat. Usually each round would end not with a bell but with the muttered "Balls!" followed by a retreat to a neutral barca-lounger and couch. Then Mom would chime in with something like "God Damn it" and the next round would start. 30-40 minutes of this at a shot was not uncommon, sometimes as many as three times a day.

I often wonder why they stayed together. And I have no idea. They were miserable, and one thing that I would tell any couple with kids (or cats/dogs/rats/chimpanzees/iguanas) is to never stay together for your kids. If you are miserable chances are your kids will be as well. Better to have awkward weekends or holidays or drunken ramblings about the evils of your former in-laws than a long term bag of never ending shit.

It also means that I HATE YELLING! Jesus Christ with egg on his beard I can't stand people yelling at each other. I mean yelling, not "raising one's voice" or "speaking with authority" or "cussing a blue streak." That's not yelling. Yelling means an effect not unlike a mail gauntlet dragged across a chalkboard. A paralyzingly painful feeling with a high pucker factor. I really dislike raising my own voice and attempt to avoid this at all costs which makes me a pushover.

2. I came in here for a special offer/A guaranteed personality

My "personality products" are Chuck Taylors (tagged red ones courtesy of the talented Austin Matthew, white, hot pink), hats (to protect the bald melon in various weathers), goatee (with mind of its own...If I try to shave it off it will kill me) and Hot Pink IPod. As a teenager there was precious little to define oneself by outside of music and what you wore.....things never change. Consumerism is an awful thing but it remains the place where you can exert some control over your own identity. That is the loneliness of the song. Apple users "drink the Kool Aid" but we all do at some point or another. The whole world is Kool Aid but we can choose the flavors. Choose the BBC or NPR flavored news over the Huff Post or Fox or MSNBC. If you must choose the HuffPo flavor, pick the politics flavor over the Jennifer Aniston side-boob flavor. Ahhhhhh who the hell am I kidding?

The only personality that matters is the one you develop. You don't get it from buying shit. I just like Hot Pink. I have always wanted a Hot Pink tuxedo. Use your personality to show yourself.