I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-Dirty (1991).

I think of Dirty as a pretty commercial album.  I mean, it’s got Butch Vig as a producer for crying out loud.  And, it has three singles released from it.

The lead off track “100%,” and track three “Theresa’s Sound World” are as catchy as anything.

And of course, Lee’s “Wish Fulfillment” is just an amazing track, and is certainly a nod to a more poppy sound.  But it is “Sugar Kane” that strikes me as their most commercial attempt yet. Of course, saying all this, one must remember that Daydream Nation & even Sister had tracks that were short and catchy.  Dirty almost feels like a condensation of that sound.

“Orange Rolls, Angel’s Spit” is one of those songs that mixes catchy sections and utter noise so successfully.  And “Youth Aginst Fascism” has a wonderfully catchy vocal line but it is backed by the squeakiest most unmusical guitars on the record (and has the memorable “I Believe Anita Hill” line).

But despite all that, there’s also two completely un-Sonic Youth songs on the disc: “Nic Fit” is a one minute hardcore punk blast while “Creme Brulee” is a solo guitar (a sort of out-of-tune, cheapo amp effect) strumalong sung by Kim.  Kim also gets “Drunken Butterfly” which is certainly not easy listening, (although the mocking of The Door’s lyrics is pretty funny).  And “Shoot,” which is one of Kim’s menacing spoken-wordish pieces that changes the overall temperament of the disc.

But, yea, there’s no denying that this is a commercial album. It features some of their catchiest and easiest-listening tracks.  And yet, the disc is certainly done on SY’s terms.  For even if they did make it onto the Billboard charts (#83), they certainly never got played on Top 40 radio.

[READ: August 6, 2009] “War Dances”

I wasn’t sure if I was going to read this short story or not.  But then this story is broken down into multiple small sections and the heading on the first was My Kafka Baggage. Now, I like Kafka, but Kafka can also be an “lazy” indicator for “weird stuff ahead”.   Nevertheless, I read the opening and I was intrigued. By the end of that section I was hooked.

And even though I felt the second section wrapped up things really nicely (it wraps up a story about the narrator’s father, but not the whole story itself), I pressed on.

All of this sounds like it’s not a strong vote of confidence for this story, but that’s far from the truth. The story was fantastic. I couldn’t get enough right up until the end, which was very satisfying.

The story concerns a forty year old Native American Indian guy. He has two kids and his wife is away in Rome on vacation. When his kids start clamoring for food, he realizes that he can’t hear them very well.  And sure enough, when he goes to the doctor, his hearing has suddenly dropped to about 30% of his normal ability.

The doctor tells him that he needs an MRI. He flashes back to taking his father to the hospital when he had to have parts of his feet removed from gangrene. The disease was brought on by alcoholism (or “natural causes” as the Indians commiserate).

The MRI reveals that he has a meningioma tumor on his brain.  But it is evidently not all that serious, and most often doctors only find these tumors after the victim is autopsied (from dying from something else). And yet, it is something pushing on his brain like when he was born and he had hydrocephalia (which Sherman himself had).

The story proceeds to bounce around his life.  He remembers interviewing a WWI veteran who knew his grandfather (and witnessed him getting shot during an act of utter heroism) He also flashes back to the poem he wrote about the time his father injured himself with a chainsaw while working as a lumberjack. The poem is great, but it turns out to be almost completely untrue to what really happened:

“Mutually Assured Destruction”

When I was nine, my father sliced his knee
With a chainsaw. But he let himself bleed
And finished cutting down one more tree
Before his boss drove him TO EMERGENCY.

Late that night, stoned on morphine and beer,
My father needed my help to steer
His pickup into the woods. “Watch for deer,”
My father said. “Those things just appear

Like magic.” It was an Indian summer
And we drove through warm rain and thunder,
Until we found that chainsaw, lying under
The fallen pine. Then I watched, with wonder,

As my father, shotgun-rich and impulse-poor,
Blasted that chainsaw dead. “What was that for?”
I asked. “Son,” my father said. “Here’s the score.
Once a thing tastes blood, it will come for more.”

He doesn’t want to be around his poor sons while he waits for the results from the MRI (and for his wife to fly back from Rome). So he goes shopping to distract himself. And when the call comes in, he keeps his good sense of humor, especially when he’s told that things should be okay, but they’ll need to do a follow up in six months.

The writing style of this story was fantastic. And the jumps from location to location and technique to technique, including the exit interview of questions he would have asked his dad, keep the story very compelling.

Sherman Alexie has outdone himself with this one.  It’s available here.