I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: JOHN PRINE-Tiny Desk Concert #717 (March 12, 2018).

For all of the legendary status of John Prine, I don’t really know that much about him.  I also think I don’t really know much of his music.  I didn’t know any of the four songs he played here.

I enjoyed all four songs.  The melodies were great, the lyrics were thoughtful and his voice, although wizened, convey the sentiments perfectly.

The blurb sums up things really well

An American treasure came to the Tiny Desk and even premiered a new song. John Prine is a truly legendary songwriter. For more than 45 years the 71-year-old artist has written some of the most powerful lyrics in the American music canon, including “Sam Stone,” “Angel From Montgomery,” “Hello In There” and countless others.

John Prine’s new songs are equally powerful and he opens this Tiny Desk concert with “Caravan of Fools,” a track he wrote with Pat McLaughlin and Dan Auerbach. Prine adds a disclaimer to the song saying, “any likeness to the current administration is purely accidental.”

I thought the song was great (albeit short) with these pointed lyrics:

The dark and distant drumming
The pounding of the hooves
The silence of everything that moves
Late in night you see them
Decked out in shiny jewels
The coming of the caravan of fools

That song, and his second tune, the sweet tearjerker “Summer’s End,” are from John Prine’s first album of new songs in 13 years, The Tree of Forgiveness.

He introduces this song by saying that.  This one is a pretty song.  It might drive you to tears.  He wrote this with Pat McLaughlin.  We usually write on Tuesdays in Nashville because that’s the day they serve meatloaf.  I love meatloaf.  We try to write a song before they serve the meatloaf.  And then eat it and record it.

For this Tiny Desk Concert John Prine also reaches back to his great “kiss-off” song from 1991 [“an old song from the 90s (whoo)…  a song from the school of kiss off 101”] called “All the Best,” and then plays “Souvenirs,” a song intended for his debut full-length but released the following year on his 1972 album Diamonds in the Rough. It’s just one of the many sentimental ballads Prine has gifted us.

He says he wrote it in 1968…when he was about 3.

Over the years, his voice has become gruffer and deeper, due in part to his battle with squamous cell cancer on the right side of his neck, all of which makes this song about memories slipping by feel all the more powerful and sad.

“Broken hearts and dirty windows
Make life difficult to see
That’s why last night and this mornin’
Always look the same to me
I hate reading old love letters
For they always bring me tears
I can’t forgive the way they rob me
Of my sweetheart’s souvenirs”

The musicians include John Prine, Jason Wilber, David Jacques and Kenneth Blevins.

 

[READ: December 11, 2017] X

I really enjoyed Klosterman’s last essay book, although I found pretty much every section was a little too long.  So this book, which is a collection of essays is perfect because the pieces have already been edited for length.

I wasn’t even aware of this book when my brother-in-law Ben sent it to me with a comment about how much he enjoyed the Nickelback essay.

Because I had been reading Grantland and a few other sources, I have actually read a number of these pieces already, but most of them were far off enough that I enjoyed reading them again.

This book is primarily a look at popular culture.  But narrowly defined by sports and music (and some movies).  I have never read any of Klosterman’s fiction, but I love his entertainment essays.

“Three-Man Weave”  Published in Grantland 1 as “Three-Man Weave”
Klosterman says that this is the best story he has ever published and I think he’s pretty accurate.  It is a great piece.

My original comments:

This was the story that let me know that [Grantland] was going to be more than just a sports book.  Even though this is a sports article, it is so much more.  Klosterman talks about a basketball game he saw in 1988 between United Tribes Technical College and North Dakota State University at Botineau in Bismarck, N.D.  What’s marvellous about the game is that the Native American team played the whole game with only 5 players and then with just a few minutes left in the game, lost two of the players and still managed to win.  The detail (and interviews) that Klosterman provides totally make  this story.

This book provides an epilogue that says the same thing happened to the same teams 28 years later.  Bottineau faced the United Tribes in the NJCAA Region 13 tournament.  United Tribes was forced to play the final 56 seconds with only two players ultimately losing 158-154 in double overtime (they had five players and lost three to fouls)

“My Zombie, Myself”
The New York Times asked him to write a story about zombies even though he never watched The Walking Dead.  They said that made him perfect to write it.  People claim that zombies are just replacing vampires as the monster du jour but the difference is that you can like a specific vampire but you can’t like  a specific zombie.  Zombies are also strangely comforting.  If a zombie apocalypse were to happen we’d all know what to do–shoot for the head but know there are always more.  It is the zombies’ world, but we can live better.  He compares it to work–an endless supply of email that never stops coming.

“That’s Not How It Happened”
This is a piece about nostalgia.  Nostalgia is typically a pleasurable experience–bittersweet but otherwise not too complicated.  But in culture writing nostalgia is a concert and you must have an opinion on how Donald Trump (who was not in the essay because it predated him) is supporting the concept of false nostalgia.  His personal example of the foolishness of nostalgia automatically being a boon for entertainment is Bark at the Moon, a cassette he listened to thousands of times as a kid. He hadn’t listened to it in ten years but when he played it again, it sounded great.  I enjoyed this essay a lot because he talks about how we all remember certain songs that were popular when we were younger and how playing that song brings back memories from that time quite easily.  However, people don’t collectively listen to the one song any more–everyone does her own thing–there will be no cultural nostalgia for that one song representing the 00s.

“The Light Who Has Lighted the World”
This is about Tim Tebow who was huge in 2011 when he wrote this.  He talks about how Tebow is aggressively Faithful but how this really has no bearing on his football playing.  Even if his playing is unorthodox.  But Klosterman gives a handful or reasons why Tebow is a good quarterback–God or not.

“There’s Something Peculiar About Lying in a Dark Room.  You Can’t See Anything”
This is a foreward to Peanuts Every Sunday 1956-1960.  He says he was honored to write this about the beloved series but feels he choked and that what came out was not what was in his head. He notes in the intro that he can’t believe the kids never tell Charlie made the right choice with the little Christmas Tree.  The rain falls on the just and the unjust and that a good system no matter how it makes us feel, basically Klosterman says I can’t write objectively about Charlie Brown. It feels like I’m writing about myself.

He calls this section White Dudes Holding Guitars. Part of my job is annoying people I admire.   When you like a band you want to hear about the good times; when you love a band you want to hear about the bad times.

“Liquid Food”
This is Klosterman’s interview with Jimmy Page.  Page is prickly, living in an era when media serves as a detriment to artistic aspiration.   Most of the interview is Page obsessing over technical details.  Sample answer:  “You know who knows me?  My clothes.  My clothes know me very well.”

“C’mon Dave, Gimme a Break”
An interview with Eddie Van Halen in which he comes across as somewhat paranoid and not particularly happy.  But it doesn’t seem like he cares if people see him that way.  His worldview is small, roughly the size of his studio.  He doesn’t listen to music. The last album he bought was Peter Gabriel’s So and he was unfamiliar with Radiohead, Metallica and Guns n’ Roses.  He seems to thrive on unyielding perfectionism.

“Where Were You While We Were Getting High?”  Published in Grantland 2 as “The ‘Talented One’ Starts Over”

An in-depth interview with Noel Gallagher from Oasis on the eve of the release of his solo album.  He comes across as funny and articulate and reasonable.  And also, maybe kind of a dick.  But the whole interview was interesting and enjoyable.

An interview with Noel Gallagher, the funniest person Klosterman ever interviewed–he had effortless humor. His ease makes people not take him seriously as an artist.  When he asks about Be Here Now Gallagher says he was taking a lot of drugs so he didn’t give a fuck.  And one of the funnier quotes: I really wonder what would have happened if Be Here Now has sold like Morning Glory. What would we have done the next time? Just imagine if that album had sold thirty million copes. ”I probably would have grown a mustache and started wearing a fucking cape.”  The biggest difference between Noel and Liam?   Liam denies his hangovers and sues people for joking about them; Noel confesses his hangover and will shake hands with anyone.

“I’m Assuming It’s Going to Be Fun”
An interview with Stephen Malkmus.  He tells is that Malkmus was not born a multimillionaire but he was never poor, which gave him an advantage over poorer artist–he could be cool on purpose.  The first thing Malkmus asks Klosterman is if he likes sports (he assumes not, which is kind of funny).  Klosterman’s love of sports makes Malkmus open up to him.  Malkmus is polite but he speaks in clear declarative sentences–he expects people to listen to him.  I like this interview in particular because Klosterman says, “I like Pavement, I suppose I really like Pavement. But I don’t love Pavement or at least not in the way every smart critic I’ve ever met seems to love them.”  That’s how I feel too.

Klosterman says that his job is to manufacture opinions.  “If a large number of strangers seem to think one of my opinions is especially true or wildly wrong, there is somehow a perception that I am succeeding at this vocation.”

“I Need to Be Alive (In Order to Watch TV)”
This is about how he can’t watch prerecorded or taped sports.

• The removal of commercials erodes drama
• If he recorded an event he would never sit through the commercials, yet when watching live, the moments when nothing happens builds drama. By watching after the fact, he is consciously distancing himself from the actual experience.  His example is of Ricky Gervais hosting the Golden Globes.  People who were there were shocked by him.  People watching on TV were polarized.  If you watched them a day later on the internet it didn’t even seem problematic.  Watching a 7 PM game at midnight is just not the same even where nothing is at stake.
• It’s also too much power–he can always just fast forward if things look bleak.
• I particularly liked this attitude: if this game has already ended and I don’t know anything about what happened, it was probably just a game.  If something amazing happens (good or bad) you’ll hear about it even if you try to avoid it  For the rest of his life he will never not instantaneously know about any marginally insane event.

“I Will Choose Free Will (Canadian Reader’s Note: This is Not About Rush)”
A discussion of The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire and Mad Men.  He determines that Breaking Bad was the best of the four.

“Everybody’s Happy When the Wizard Walks By (Or Maybe Not?  Maybe They Hate It?  Hard to Say, Really)”
He knows nothing about Harry Potter.  He has a fiend who has never seen any Star Wars, she knows a joke about a wookie supposed to be funny but it never makes her laugh.  He then imagines what Harry Potter is all about and he gives a pretty good approximation, but I am pleased that he gets significant things wrong, indicating to me that the series isn’t as obvious as it could have been.

“Speed Kills (Until It Doesn’t)”  Published in Grantland 1 as “Is the Fastest Human Ever Already Alive?”
This was a favorite article.

This was a wonderful look at Usain Bolt and whether anyone will be faster than him.  If so, what is the fastest speed a man can achieve.  The other side of this article is why do we care?  We are so proud of ourselves and yet as mammals we are pitifully slow.

“Not a Nutzo Girl, Not Yet a Nutzo Woman (Miley Cyrus, 2008)”
This is the strange case of Hannah Montana.  A pop star named Hannah Montana who lives an unassuming life as California citizen Miley Stewart.  Both are played by Miley Cyrus.  But this is really a segue about the internet in which people can create a public identity of their own.  You create a persona and that’s who you are even if it changes.  Everyday life is like this.  How do you cope with the disparity between how you are seen in the communal sphere and how they live in private that is why Hannah Montana works–teenagers can relate to her.  Many teenagers feel that they are famous because of their online presence even though no one actually knows who they are.

“When Giants Walked the Earth (And Argued about China)”
This is all about The McLaughlin Group and why it is a great resource for human interaction (not necessarily politics or journalism).  You can’t blame its clones for not doing what McLaughlin did so well.  Adversaries who hate each other must love each other on the show. Simplify then exaggerate.

“Use Your Illusion (But Don’t Bench Ginobili)”
In this game, the Miami Heat beat San Antonio 105-100.  But the real controversy was on the bench.  The Spurs’ coach elected not to play four of his best players to keep them fit for a later game.  This outraged everyone.  This is a pretty long article and it’s interesting if you care about this sort of thing.  Which I don’t, but I still found it interesting.

“The Drugs Don’t Work (Actually, They Work Great)”
This is about anabolic steroids and football, but he compares it to music–imagine if bands were persecuted for doing drugs.  The Beatles took performance enhancing drugs and no one holds it against them

“The City That Time Remembered (Tulsa, Oklahoma)”
This was a funny article about him desperately trying to get to an event in Tulsa but failing to get there on time.  .In 1957 a Plymouth was buried with a time capsule in it, and here it was 2007 and it was going to be dug up.  He wanted to be there for the big unveiling. He winds up talking to a lot of people in Tulsa about the city and they all make it sound like a post-apocalyptic wasteland.   He says if nostalgia is remembering the past as better than it actually was, what word is its opposite?  What word describes inaccurately imagining a future that will be worse than logic dictates.  “Whatever it is, I need less of it.”

“But What If We’re Wrong? (Drink the Acid, Swallow the Mouse)”
A man sued Mountain Dew because he found a mouse in a bottle.  Pepsi said Mountain Dew would dissolve the mouse.  Klosterman has consumed 32 to 64 ounce of Dew almost every day for the last 21 years.  He says he has experienced no ill effects from this expect that he’s kind of fat and pretty crazy and he can never sleep (even though he is always tired).  “I’m sipping one right now and it’s making me feel invincible. I’m not gonna lie, I feel awesome. I feel more awesome than you in all probability.”  Also, If you also eat a lot of processed crap, perhaps Mountain Dew is there to dissolve what our body cannot.

“Owner of a Lonely Heart”
This is about Taylor Swift.  Before the essay he writes that he never describes what she looks like because a male describing a woman pretty much sexualizes her or makes her seem less important than her outfit.  Which is why he likes to stick to old white guys-nobody cares how you describe them.  There’s a funny exchange in which she takes a call from Justin Timberlake and says “this is so crazy that he called me.”  But to Chuck it’s not remotely crazy.  Why wouldn’t Justin Timberlake want to perform with her?  She is the most significant artist of the modern age.

Klosterman has a serious, thoughtful discussion with her. I liked this thought: Like almost all famous people, Swift has two ways of speaking.  The first is the way she talks when she’s actively shaping the interview–optimistic, animated and seemingly rehearsed (even when that’s impossible). The second is the way she talks when she cares less about the way the words are presented and more about the message itself (chin slightly down, brow slightly furrowed, timbre slightly deeper).

“The Enemy of My Enemy is Probably Just Another Enemy”
An interview with Kobe Bryant.  He’s a fascinating guy who puts a lot of thought into what he does and who he is.

“A Road Seldom Traveled by the Multitudes”
This is an interview with Jonathan Franzen which he found uncomfortable because unlike every other celebrity he interviews he and Franzen do basically the same thing (albeit Franzen is better and more successful).  It’s a power imbalance that they were both aware of.  The best quote “inauthentic people are obsessed with authenticity.”

“Brown Would be the Color (If I Had a Heart)” Published in Grantland 8 as “Black and Brown Blues”
Klosterman travels to Cleveland believing he’s going to get an inside story on draft day.  But he gets led on and shunted around and winds up with nuthin.
If the Cleveland Browns were a person that person’s life would be miserable.  Like Kelly on 90210 who over the course of 10 years was: raped, became addicted to cocaine, had a miscarriage, was shot with a firearm, had a mother who was an alcoholic, had a brother who was a meth addict, briefly got amnesia, was unsuccessfully murdered by a woman who became obsessed with her haircut, and was trapped inside a burning building after joining a cult. If Kelly Taylor became the first woman to enter the NFL, she’d be drafted by the Browns.

“I Hear That You and Your Band Have Sold Your Guitars”
This profile ran about James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem in 2010.  This was later used in the film about the band and their “final show.”  For the film they asked Klosterman to ask the exact same questions so Murphy could give the exact same answers.  “In the movie, you;re seeing a fake version of me attempting to conduct a fake interview for purposes unrelated to journalism.”  The band reunited in 2016 four years after making a movie out how they would never perform again.  “I always told myself I wouldn’t do LCD past the age of forty (he is now 47 and made an album that is on critics best of lists for 2017.  I had no idea he was from Princeton Junction, where I work.

“White’s Shadow” Published in Grantland 7 as “Mental Health Protocol”
I found this fascinating when I first read it and fascinating again even if I have never heard of him outside of Klosterman.  He says that when it appeared, White called him and gushed over the article but over the following days people convinced him it was condescending and anti labor so he decided he liked it less.

“House Mouse in the Mouse House”
This was written about Gnarls Barkely just before they became huge.  He can’t get over how much is incorrect.   He focused on Danger Mouse but it was Cee Lo who exploded.  He says this is more about 2006 than the band.  He also says that Danger Mouse doesn’t give many interviews so he’s happy to have this one.

“The Man Who Knew Too Much”
An interview with Tom Brady.  Klosterman’s only goal was to ask him about the deflated footballs, and the Brady camp said  yes, that was on the table.  But when Klosterman talked to him about it he refused to answer.  Brady probably must have assumed this interview was going to focus on how complicated it is to have a hot wife and an awesome apartment.  It was all misdirection.

A few Klosterman thoughts on the next few articles:    I love covering uncool artist because groups described as hated are almost always more poplar than groups described as beloved

“The Opposite of Beyonce” Published in Grantland 4 as “The Rock Tautology”
Chuck saw Creed and Nickelback on the same night at two different venues.   Creed was first–an older, balding crowd .  The music of Creed is powerful–that’s not the same as good, but it’s something.  He stays to see “My Own Prison,” a song he deems excellent, and then he leaves to catch Nickelback across town.

In the last twenty years there have been five bands totally acceptable to hate reflexively–no one would question why you’d trash: Bush, Hootie and the Blowfish, Limp Bizkit, Creed and Nickelback. Chad Kreoeger every day gives interviews to people who ask why everyone hates his band and then at night plays to thousands of people who worship him.

“Like Regular Music, Except Good”
This is a hilarious essay.  It was a satirical overview if the Beatles’ catalog reissues  for The Av Club.  I remain amazed by how many of the readers had no idea it was a joke.  This was further amplified by people who used it as source material for a Wikipedia entry on Beatles albums.
The Beatles are a 1960s band so obscure that their music is not even available on bandcamp.  It’s hard to categorize them, their sound is best described as Beatleseque.

I wrote about the video for Becks Loser for the 25th anniversary of Spin magazine which is kind of like writing about Gayle King’s Favorite sweater for the 25th anniversary of Oprah magazine.

“Non-Suppressive Slacker”
When people watched Beck’s “Loser” video for the first time they said “I guess this is an okay song.  And also, the culture inverted itself–weirdness was mainstreamed, everyone stopped combing their hair, people slept more, dirt bags began using the word art in casual conversation.”  Listen to it now and it seems like an engaging strange song.  not a truly strange song, but a conventionally strange song.  You knew then it was about nothing he was lazy on purpose.  People like to compare “Loser” to “Creep”but it’s bogus, there’s a narrative to “Creep.” And when Beck asked people to kill him only a fool would think he was serious.

Everything in my Chinese Democracy review remains true

“Democracy Now!”
reviewing his album is more like reviewing a unicorn.  Should be blown away that it exists at all?  In sum: three of the songs are astonishing.  Four or five others are very good.  The vocals are brilliantly recorded and the guitars are more interesting than anything on the Use Your Illusion albums–it’s better that Slash isn’t here, because this record feels new.   Under normal circumstances, he would give it an A.  But there are songs that Axl has often noble and unrealized goals.  On “Sorry” he sings an innocuous line “But I don’t want to do it” in some bizarre quasi-Transylvanian accent and I cannot begin to speculate as to why and yet it comes very close to fulfilling his expectations.

Some weird things: nearly 60 percent of the lyrics seem to be about the making of the album itself.  The craziest track is “Sorry” the most uplifting are “Street of Dreams,” “Catcher in the Rye” (exceptionally satisfying).  The music is better than anticipated, doesn’t sound dated or faux industrial.

Everything about my Lulu review remains true except for the part about it being supernaturally appalling. It’s merely terrible

“Metal Machine ‘Music'”
He has a lot of fun dismissing Lulu.  It might be successful simulation of how it feels to develop schizophrenia while suffering form a seven-month migraine, although slightly less melodic.  The reason Lulu is so terrible is because the people making this music clearly don’t care if anyone else enjoys it.  Viewed in a vacuum that sentiment is admirable.  But we don’t live in a vacuum, we live on earth. And that means we have to accept the real-life consequences of a culture where recorded music no longer has monetary value, and that consequence is Lulu.

The conceit behind the VORM experiment was concocted by other people and the whole thing felt like a fade away 23 foot jumper with the shot clock running down.  But the fabricated math equation holds up surprisingly well, except that you need to know a lot about the Strokes in order to get it.

“2+2=5” Published in Grantland 1 as “Rock VORP”
VORP means Value Over Replacement Player, a metric that is used in sports (I presume).  Klosterman tries to use this metric in music, figuring out how much so and so member of such and such band is worth both to the band and in the history of music.  Its preposterous and quite funny.  Although when he lists the bands at the end and gives their attendant value, I have to assume he’s joking–Slade over Primus?  Funny nonetheless.

I don’t expect the most people who buy this book will read a ten thousand word essay on KISS.  It is however, twice as good as a five thousand word essay on Kiss.

“Advertising Worked on Me” Published in Grantland 12 as “The Life and Times of Kiss”
I have now read this four times and have enjoyed it every time.  Here’s a lengthy review.

“Hero in Black”  Published in Grantland 10 as “Remembering Lou Reed”
It’s a good eulogy.
There’s no point in attacking someone recently dead.  Unless that man is Lou Reed … all obituaries will note his cantankerous qualities .  He is famous for acting like a prick.  But what’s tragic about his loss is that despite the universally shared opinions of Lou Reed; his persona never made anyone question the merits of his work.  His discussion of VU is pretty great, his discussion of Metal Machine Music is pretty hilarious and great.

“Villain in White”
About Jani Lane, the front man for Warrant.  He was an incredible front man, particularly in 1989.  He was loquacious and funny and famous-looking and Warrant tried so hard to be entertaining. Jani wanted their second album to be called Uncle Tom’s Cabin–he thought the title track was the most sophisticated thing he’d composed.  But the record company wanted an unserious anthem. He supposedly wrote “Cherry Pie” in less than fifteen minutes, made several million dollars, and regretted having done so for the next fifteen years.   Warrant was blamed for killing heavy metal even though they never exhibited any interest in being heavy or metallic.

“(1928-2013)”  Published in Grantland 10 as “The Eroding Generation Gap”
The Generation Gap has been replaced by the Technology Gap.
Eminem was standing in the press box with Brent Musbuger and Kirk Herbsrtreit having the least natural conversation I’ve ever witnessed.  When I watch sports on TV I feel like I’m watching athletes who are older than me, even though that is almost never true.  Eminem is the opposite–it feels like he is fifteen years younger than me.  Eminem is promoting an album in a very strange place

“Something Else”
Klosteman didn’t love AC/DC.  They were too real for him. But he finds he likes them more now than he did when he was 14 (even though they are designed for 14-year-olds).   He talks a lot about death in this article. wondering whose death will make the cover of Rolling Stone and then has an interesting observation.  It seems like a lot of musicians and other celebrities are dying a lot.  That’s because people became famous in the 1960s and 1970s, but there were far more people made famous by the shallow nature of the 80s and the 90s.  People were “famous” for all kinds of things, good and bad.   There’s never going to be a downturn in the number of famous corpses

When I heard about the passing of Prince, I was walking into a movie theater.  For two hours the tragedy seemed so tragic.  But when I exited the theater, it dawned on me that evidently I didn’t care at all relative to the world at large.  So many other people were performing their love of Prince, gnashing their teeth and screaming into the void, endlessly exclaiming how the unfairness of this man’s passing was conjoined with their own high school experience of listening to When Doves Cry.  I could not psychologically compete.

And as we have seen, it only gets worse.