I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: WEEZER-Weezer (Red Album) (2008).

So hooked was I by the video for “Buddy Holly” that there was little chance of me ever disliking Weezer.  When Pinkerton came out, it quickly became one of my favorite records.  “Pink Triangle” is such a great song about unrequited love for a lesbian.  And of course, “El Scorcho” is a wonderfully off-kilter single.  Since then, Weezer have put out a bunch of albums, some with titles and some without.  This is their 3rd record called Weezer, but it’s the Red Album because its cover is red (duh).

I know that many people can’t stand Weezer (or at least couldn’t back the last time I bothered to check what the pop culture world was thinking…although I think they may be cool now).  They have an uncanny sense of pop melody even when their songs are weird or funny or even seemingly out of tune.  I think that’s why I like them so much, because their songs sometimes start out of tune and the ultimately wind up being super catchy.  I also like them because Rivers Cuomo went back to Harvard to get his degree in English (one wonders of course, why he chooses to write such pedestrian rhymes, but that’s another story altogether), and because he’s a geek in general.

No doubt you’ve heard at least one Weezer song, and you’d be living under a rock if you haven’t heard their new, ubiquitous single “Pork and Beans.”  And “Pork and Beans” is as good a place to start as any.  It’s got fairly heavy guitars, it’s catchy as all get out, it’s rather anti-authority, and parts of it don’t make any sense…that’s Weezer for you.

This record is pretty strong overall.  The first 5 songs are pretty standard Weezer.  There’s a really heavy start song, a sentimental song “Heart Songs” which name checks some of Rivers’ favorite songs growing up, and what has become my favorite song on the record: “The Greatest Man that Ever Lived.”  This is a long song (for Weezer) at nearly six minutes.  What’s cool about it is that every verse is done in a different style of music: there’s a metal verse, a choral verse, a spoken word verse etc.  And the chorus is simple and wonderful.  It could go on for twenty minutes and would still be great.

“Everybody Get Dangerous” is a weird song to me.  It doesn’t quite sound right. It’s still catchy, but I think maybe saying the word dangerous makes a chorus sound weird.  (How’s that for subjective?).  Or, which is more likely, the verses are the catchy part and the chorus is the off-kilter section.

The second half of the record strikes a few firsts, in that the other members of the band sing lead vocals on a few tracks.  Even though the songs are good (and when I heard “Automatic” on the radio the other day on WRXP, it sounded great by itself) there’s something off about them being on a Weezer record.  I think maybe I associate Rivers’ voice with their style so much that any other voice just makes things seems askew.  That said, the songs are good, they’re just not “Weezer.”

I have to get back to the lyrics though.  Rivers is more about harmony and melody, I know, but sometimes those lyrics are so simple as to be almost a joke in themselves.  Maybe that’s the point.  (And as an English major myself, I secretly believe it is the point).  After a few listens I stop cringing about the lyrics and I just start enjoying them.

The last song gives me some problems because it runs nearly seven minutes long.  Obviously not a problem in itself, but the last two or two and a half minutes are just the song fading out, which…come on.

[DIGRESSION] I think I’m probably the only person who gets bothered by songs that fade out too long or songs that I think should be a minute shorter than they are.  And I realized it’s because I have a limited time where I can listen to music carefully.  And so when I do, I don’t want it wasted with silence or fade outs or final choruses that repeat sixteen times. On the other hand, if I just have music on in the background (which is how most people listen to music) you will hardly notice those extra 45 seconds.  But when you’re in the car, and you know you’ll be at work in exactly 3 minutes, you don’t want 2 minutes of fade!

[READ: August 14, 2008] One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

My first real awareness of Solzhenitsyn actually comes from the Moxy Fruvous song “Johnny Saucep’n”:

Well he was just some Johnny Saucep’n when he walked into that kitchen.
And the chef picked up the order and put down his Solzhenitsyn

I’d made a mental note to check him out based on this (it doesn’t take much sometimes).  But then when he died on August 3 (and who could have even imagined he was still alive), it was a second impetus to read him.  The last straw came when a patron asked for his obituary.  He said he used to teach his books.  So, I asked him where I should start.  He told me One Day… (it’s by far the shortest) and I made sure to read it right away.

And thus, I have now read two Russian books in a row.  (Mental Floss magazine also had an article about Ukraine that I just read about as well, so there’s lots of Russian in my blood these days).

One Day is the story of Ivan Denisovich, a prisoner in a Soviet gulag.  He has been in prison for 8 years and has two more to go on his sentence.  The reason for his being in the camp is a trumped up charged of being a spy for the Germans (he was captured by the Germans and escaped, but since he was crossing from enemy lines he was branded a spy).  The story follows (as you may guess) one day in the prison camp.

Camp conditioners are brutal.  Official policy is that if the temperature drops below minus 40 degrees F, they do not have to work.  On this day, the temperature hovers around minus 25 degrees F, so they must go off to work.  Today’s work includes building a building for future prisoners.  Thus, they are erecting a building with bricks and mortar OUTSIDE in minus 25 degree weather.  There is a heater, but it is of little help (and they must find the fuel for it themselves).

The zeks (prisoners) are given three meals, yet they hardly receive the minimum requirement (everyone up the chain of command takes a bit extra), so they barely scrape by.  A zek considers himself lucky if he can lick out an extra bowl.  Any sort of misbehavior (actual or imagined) (including licking out another’s bowl) gets you sent to the hole, which is pretty much a hole.  As Ivan puts it, a short stay gives you pneumonia, a ten day staff (a common punishment) and you’ll never recover.

Clearly, reading this book at lunch time during the summer, was not the most sympathetic reading time.

But regardless, the most bizarre thing about this book is that Ivan is a surprisingly good-natured individual.  Even though in the morning when he wakes up, (at 5 AM before everyone else, even before 6AM wake up) he uses all his ingenuity to try to go to sick bay to get out of work.  When it doesn’t work out, he seems to take everything else in stride.  In fact, as far as days go, this one was a particularly good one for him.  Without giving too much away: he scores extra rations, he avoids getting put in the hole, and most fascinatingly, he builds a wall.  He is working on the wall of this building, and since he has masonry skills, he is put in charge of this one section of the wall.  A great deal of time is spent at this wall: how it is so cold the cement freezes very quickly, etc.  But what makes it so fascinating is that he really gets a groove going on, and starts enjoying himself.  The hard work warms him, and he gets a sense of satisfaction from what he’s doing; so much so that when the whistle blows for his day to be over, he wants to finish his section!  (He says its so that it won’t settle incorrectly for tomorrow).

All in all you get this really weird sense that he sort of likes being in the prison….  He even says as much at one point: he has been away from his family for so long that it may be easier for him to stay where he is.  When I started the book, I imagined I was in for a horror story the likes of Elie Weisel’s Night, or Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.  I was blown away at how not terrible he made it sound (despite all of the horrors within).

Solzhenitsyn himself was in the gulag for many years, so this story is somewhat autobiographical.  It is still surprising that it was published when and where it was, and yet when you read about its impact, and its effect on the USSR specifically and human rights in general, it’s amazing how much a little recognition can have.  I also hate to sound like he had it easy in the gulag.  I’m not saying that freezing temperatures an no food is easy, but compared to the things I’ve seen and heard at Guantanamo Bay, this isn’t nearly as bad.  i assume he tried to keep it more mild, so that it would get printed, as if he told the real gruesome details I can’t imagine the paper would have printed it.

Nevertheless, I don’t think I ‘m ready to read Gulag Archipelago anytime soon.