#17: Subdivisions -- Rush

This song is about the terrible suburbs that many folks found themselves in in the 1980s, but it also carries several other meanings. In Latin, suburbs is from the word subura, meaning "below the city" as it was the area between the seven hills of Rome. The poor folks and the huddled masses lived there, which is achingly true of the 1980s experience for white teenagerdom of which I was a part.

Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
Between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown

The bright lights get the attention, but growing up in Iowa it was the far unlit unknown that was the true scary place. What lay out in the areas beyond Hills and North Liberty? Nowadays those places might as well be part of Iowa City; the tentacles of Cedar Rapids and the University of Iowa grow closer and closer together. No more small town tirades or trips to the Casey's for pizza and illegal booze and smokes. The sinister names of roads that led into the cornfields (Seven Sisters Road, Old Highway 218) are now streets with Whole Foods and crummy overpriced sports bars.

The disappearance of the "unlit unknown" does not matter for those on both coasts who live in the bright lights. If anything, they are far more worried about the gentrification of poor neighborhoods, and not concerned about the destruction of the poor neighborhoods of those who work the land and have the ill fortune not to be poor in an urban area.

Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night

We of the middle of this country go to cities because that is where the jobs are. My brothers and I are the first generation of my family to not live on a farm. I do not bemoan this, I celebrate it. Farming is damn hard work that I do not want. Towns and cities provide jobs and the ability to have a damn good time. Having lived in a small town (Dallas City, IL, population 1000) the business that everyone knows you is true. The tale that everyone is friendly is not. The mechanic was very friendly to me because I had a piece of shit car that kept breaking down. The gas station lady was friendly to me because I was the only person in town that bought Oil Cans of Fosters.

Suburbs grew because of the perception that our childhoods were idyllic. The perception that large cities could not possibly be a safe environment for children or families. I would argue that Dallas City was far less safe for a child than some large cities. Yes, there may not be gangs on the street or molesters hanging from the trees. However, there would not be a meth lab six houses down, nor a 20-minute bus ride to the nearest school. There would also not be any jobs, care for the elderly or medical services that did not require a 10-15 minute wait. These things are routinely complained about in San Francisco and Oakland. The perception is that this is an urban problem. In reality, it is a class problem. As professionals move from these places, the tax base drops. Services disappear.

Add 'em all up, and you have the death of middle America; not the middle of American geography, but the death of middle-class America. This began happening in Iowa in the 1970s with the death of the family farm, just like it happened in the 1970s with the closing of factories in the Rust Belt. The middle class jobs disappeared, pushing out the kids of middle class parents to the suburbs of places like Chicago, Toronto, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix. My hometown will never die because of the University of Iowa. Burlington has lost 20.6% of its population since 1960. Vista Bakery and Champion Spark Plug are still there, but the largest employer is Great River Medical Center. 12.6% of the population were age 65 or older according to the 2000 census. In 2013, that percentages is estimated at 18.3.

Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose their race to rats
Get caught in clicking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight
Somewhere out of a memory of lighted streets on quiet nights

 Places like Dallas City do not change because they are in that slow shambling drift toward  invisibility. They are already irrelevant, except for photo ops.  Factory closes? Well, it had to happen because it was inefficient. School shuts down? Well, we will still provide quality services for you children in the next town down the highway. Meth or heroin epidemic? Well, our drug programs are very successful! Mass shooting? (Insert politician in front of building, and they will say "We are shocked and saddened by this senseless tragedy.")

Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone

All the dreamers and misfits work for Google and Apple now. Their God is Mammon, and you will know them by their actions and Limousine Liberalism.

#16 Dirty Jobs -- The Who

Ahhhhhhh, Quadrophenia. One of the first Who tapes I bought included the song 5:15, but I had no idea what album it was on. That tape also had the song “love Reign o’er me”, a song I absolutely hated. And still do, for that matter. One thing that has constantly hit me about a lot of my musical taste is that I cannot escape from is my initial reaction to songs stays with me because of my mental state when I heard the song first.

                With Quadrophenia, the songs that typify John Entwistle (Dr. Jimmy) and Keith Moon (Bell Boy) always spoke to me for some reason. Most likely because I was a completely angry, 13 year old. I had no ideas of mods and rockers, scooters and seersucker. All I knew was that these songs (as well as The Real Me)hit me in the sweet spot of anger.  But there was one song that made a difference, and it is still my favorite song on the album.

I’m getting put down

I’m being pushed ‘round

I’m being beaten every day

My life is waiting

Things are changing

These are powerful words for a 12 year old, especially one in an abusive household. Incredibly powerful words. I could never get it out of my head in junior high that there was much more to life than what I was seeing and putting up with. I thought about running away several times, but where would I go? The only other place I knew well (well 2 other places) were Montrose, Iowa and Mountainburg, Arkansas.

 Hell, at that point I knew I had a brother named Garry who worked at the T&M Mighty Mart, but I did not know where he lived. I had no damn idea how to get to either of those other places, besides going south via Hwy 218.  By the time I was about 13, dad had become relatively manageable. Meaning I knew how to avoid him and everyone else I did not want to meet. Usually, that meant going to the 7-11 and indulging in Super Big Gulps and Super Mario Brothers or Excitebike. Damn Nintendo.

On a side note, I was so excited when I moved to the west coast and found 7-11s still extant! I love 7-11. LOVE IT! I instantly bought a Horchata Big Gulp in Watsonville, CA and felt sick for two days. I don’t care. It was awesome and I would do it again. At some point age and experience will win with me, but not yet.

But that song. It’s about a bunch of folks who have odd jobs: bus driver, pig farmer, etc. It is also about age and experience, class and children.  In the context of the album, it serves a sort of bridge function, shuffling identities across the span of time taken in the songs. It is not musically a standout of the album, certainly not up to par with “Punk Meets the Godfather”, “The Real Me”, “Sea and Sand” and others. It is not lyrical, nor it is brutal. It is matter of fact:

I am a man who drives the local bus

I take miners to work but the pits are closed today

It’s easy to see that you are one of us

Ain’t it funny how we all seem to look the same?

Quodrophenia is an album about clothes, styles and identity, and for my money this is the most brilliant lyric on the album. This man, driving a bus, engages in the same type of judgment as the mods:

My jacket’s gonna be cut slim and checked

Maybe a touch of seersucker with an open neck

The Bellboy:

I’m on the job and I’m newly born

You should see me dressed up in my uniform

I work in a ‘otel, all gilt and flash

Remember that place whose doors we smashed????

But what the bus driver is talking about is far deeper. It is that look in the eyes of the defeated, the downtrodden. Those who have little hope for the future and little love for their past, meaning that the present is just more shit that is hopeless and unloved, an outlook that poisons lives.  The miners look the same in uniform, when they come out of the pit and when they go to get pissed on a weekend; the mods and rockers, wearing more authentic uniforms than the miners can afford or the man on the job, dress differently in their similarity. They work with a palate of designs not their own.

The payoff is this, though:

Just like a child, I’m seeing only dreams

I’m all mixed up, but I know what’s right.

For a 12-13 year old, this was eye opening. It still is; even if we cannot choose what is right, we know what it is.  After we choose, there is the remnant. In my experience, it is guilt over choosing the incorrect or easy path. For others, it is choosing the correct or right one only to be treated poorly. Some win, some keep on as before. For those of us with guilt (and I do not mean Catholic guilt; I mean noxious self-imposed guilt) it colors our lives.  We know what is right; in our dreams we are always right. But we see only dreams because every move we make is wrong. Sometimes this extends past ourselves into disappointing the ones that we love (which is very painful) but most times it is just ourselves that we see as failing to live up to those dreams. And so we continue to the next day to dream and fail again; occasionally we get past our own expectation of failure, but because they are simple and our own, they are not noticed.

I’m not gonna sit and weep again.

Again, Townsend captures the anger. Not outward, but inward. The worst kind. 

#15: You Ain't Going Nowhere -- Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Rosanne Cash (1992)

This is a Dylan song that I heard for the first time in junior high (8th grade or thereabouts) when I put my brothers copy of The Byrd's Sweetheart of the Rodeo on his turntable. It was country, and I liked the song, but it did not make that much of an impact on me. When I heard this recording from the 30th Anniversary CD that Rachel bought, it blew me away.

The lyrics have always appealed to me. Looking forward to good times and discarding the rough times, Dylan writes get your mind off wintertime/you ain't going nowhere. This could be a veiled warning or an expression that you will stay in summer. I've tended to read it as the latter. But then,  I suppose I am an optimist. This may be quite surprising to some people, but those who know me best would probably agree that I am. Dylan wrote this song at a time when he was recovering from his motorcycle accident in 1966. I ran into this song when I was in Iowa City, struggling through a third unproductive year of crap at the University.

I am particularly drawn to the lyric strap yourself to a tree with roots/you ain't goin nowhere. Perhaps it is a different song if a woman is singing it; the more I think about it, the difference between Graham Parsons and Colvin, Carpenter and Cash lay in the nexus of belief, trust and control. Belief and trust are two very different things. We can have both in ourselves, but it means so much more when someone else has those things in us. It gives us power to do things that we never thought possible.

One thing that I complain about with the current crop of students that I deal with is this. They believe in themselves, yet constantly need affirmation. Maybe this is due to parents who moan about AP classes and assorted crap. OMG! MY CHILD GOT A 3 ON THE AP EURO TEST! parents, don't treat your children like receptacles of failure, but don't kiss their asses either. There is a balance to be struck to forge adults.

The last verse purposefully does not rhyme, in that


Genghis Khan could not keep
All his general supplied with sleep
We'll climb that hill no matter how steep
When we get up to it

Right on. The message of this song is to take what you have, be purposefully happy with it, and go on. Problems are in the future, and some of those you will never have dreamed of in 1000 years. Climb 'em when you get there; if you worry about how things should be, you will never see the hill that gives you meaning.

I am not a parent, and I do not know what being a parent entails. My father was less a dad to me than my brother was. My mother was caring and very supportive but maintained a distance that I am still uncomfortable with. They did the best job possible for them, and I have my own problems. Those problems are my own; some roots are with my folks, but

Get your mind off wintertime
You ain't goin' nowhere

The wintertime is cold, colorless. It is not dead; there is life beneath that crust. The past is truly dead, but we keep it alive through our choices. As I am over 40, I am just beginning to realize this and desperately working to bend the passages my former choices produced. We all get there, it just takes some people longer if they get the chance. We need to help them notice the chances. When we see those chances, and people taking them, there is cause for celebration.

Oh oh, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair!


.

San Francisco Cantos I and II

I.
Shadows of Haight phantoms of movements
angry drunks and street musicians
hookah shops and vintage clothes.
Need any weed? 
Anarchist bookstore owners haggle
over refunds while the ghosts stare down
from their shelves. Tourists elbow past looking
for something, anything. Take those pictures
on the famous corner while the addicts yell
Fuck you, man! I ain't sharing nothing with you!
Got a picture of Jerry in your window?
Got a tye-dyed shirt with a skull and a bear
trading on Old Gods Long Dead?
Got a picture of Janis, George and Levon?

II.
The shop wanted thirteen dollars for
a fried green tomato sandwich with
something called aioli. In Georgia it would
run about four dollars or less. Pay for
convenience and ambiance and look out
the window in the break in wifely conversation
and see drunks and twentysomethings
and technicolor spectres of ancient pasts.
Shove your aioli
and your homemade mayo
and your five dollar french fries
made from one sustainably grown spud.
Expensive with a taste that I can
recreate at home. Is that your message?
That we should not drive here to eat
food that can be done at home for
less cost and less gas?

#14: Scenes from an Italian Restaurant -- Billy Joel (1977)

This is again one of those songs that I know from Bill. Billy Joel was his favorite musician, and for some reason this song has made appearances over the past few weeks.

1. While we were in Vegas, John off handedly said "bottle of red, bottle of white" and I replied "Whatever kind of mood you're in tonight." Yes, I know. Nerdy.

2. When I told this to Rachel, she got that "What?" look on her face when I reference something that she does not know. So, I had to do a bit of the song.

The song is in three sections: people get together who were friends in, you guessed it, an Italian Restaurant. Joined by a sax solo, they reminisce about old times and catch each other up.

As I get older, it is fascinating how much songs change meaning. When I was in high school, this song was Bill's domain of last chances and lost people. When Joel sings "Things are OK with me these days" and rattles off a list of things that end with "fine" we all know it to be bull shit, but I bought it as a 14 year old. New office, wife meant things were good. I was a materialist even then, obsessed with how much I make.

And then the conversation turns to Brenda and Eddie, high school sweethearts who get married. As someone who married their high school sweetheart, this area of the song has special resonance for precisely the right reasons. In the song, things fall apart:

they lived for a while in a very nice style

but it's always the same in the end

they got a divorce as a matter of course

and they parted the closest of friends.

Rachel and I have come close to falling apart, closer than I probably realize. The thing is, it doesn't always have to be the same in the end. People do grow apart; Rachel is quite a different person now than when I married her. Many of our difficulties lay in the idea that I think I am not a better person than I am. She knows and appreciates my qualities, much more than I do. People cannot stay the same, as there would be no growth. I have not grown as much as I would have liked, and view this as meaning that I am some kind of fuck up. I am intensely proud of my wife and her many accomplishments, and could never think of a better person to be with.

This song is all about appearances, and so is my mind. It functions, sometimes very well, but I make poor decisions that I do not understand. One thing that I make a conscious effort to never do is take Rachel for granted. This is one of the mistakes made by the young couple.

They just didn't' count on the tears

At first, I know that I did not, either. Anyone in a relationship knows that there are ups and downs. For younger people these are fast: this song could never be written today, as either one of the people would have solicited relationship advice for any one of 100000 internet advice cites that link to the HuffPo. Swayed to one side or the other, they will make a choice and very few people part as friends anymore. People change, and there will be tears. People do not grow in a positive direction at all times. Older couples know this; the point is to believe that the negative is a period and not a permanent. Positives are the same. Brenda and Eddie were the king and the queen of the prom, but that never lasts.

So the king and the queen went back to the green

But you can never go back there again

You can, but you are no longer the king and queen. Be thankful for that, as being the star athlete, prom king, famous in whatever way ends.