An otherwise reasonably sane friend called me up and announced she was going to stay up all night watching the Royal Wedding.
"I was a tomboy," she explained. "I never went through the princess phase."
"And now you have to make up for it at 2 in the morning?"
She shrugged. "It's not something I really understand. It's just something I want to do."
"But you're not English," I said. "You're not even Canadian."
"No. But I've been to London. Once."
"But we're American. We don't believe in royalty. We rejected that hundreds of years ago."
"Sure," she said. "But I can still dream."
"Not if you're awake at 2 in the morning."
And she smiled. Indulgently. "It's not a guy thing. You wouldn't understand."
So that's why she'll be at home overnight hosting a party of 11 women (most of whom are reasonably sane), watching an absurd event half a world away... while I'm dreaming of rock 'n' roll.
The wall calendar mocks me with its scenes from November and my reluctance to flip it over to the last month of the year. While the news is filled with stories of Goldman Sachs executives spending their multi-million-dollar bonuses on tropical vacations (and guns), most people I know are broke. And it was 80 degrees yesterday.
Plus, people drive like idiots and you don't want to be anywhere near a mall for the next three and a half weeks.
None of which makes me feel very Christmas-y, despite the fact that Christmas music is everywhere (on streets, on the radio, in stores, and in nearly every music blog in the universe).
And humbug. (With the greedies, featuring Paul Cook and Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols plus with Phil Lynott, Brian Downey and Scott Gorham from Thin Lizzy).
"Hey," she said, "do you want to go square dancing?"
No. But not only did I not want to go. I didn't want her to want to go.
And while it was (more than) okay for me not to want to go, looking back I can see that not wanting her to want to go was a problem. And a red flag.
That's just common sense.
But when you want something as much as I wanted her, your common sense books the first flight for the tropics, leaving you stuck in the fog.
In the 1970s, Adam Ant was heading nowhere. He was in a band called Bazooka Joe that is remembered today only as the answer to the trivia question "who was the headliner at the first live Sex Pistols show?"
But Adam watched the Sex Pistols, glimpsed the future, and broke up his band. His next band, Adam and the Ants, fused ska polyrhythms, punk energy, and glam dress-up style with pirate uniforms.
He eventually got Sex Pistols svengali Malcolm McLaren to manage the band. But McLaren had little interest in Adam Ant and soon convinced the other Ants to jump ship to join Bow Wow Wow. Undeterred (or at least not wanting candy), Ant recruited Marco Pirroni (ex of Siouxsie and the Banshees) and several others as the new Adam and the Ants. Pirroni would write or co-write most of their hits, even after Ant hung up his puffy pirate shirt for good. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)
I talked her out of square dancing and talked her into going to see Adam and the Ants. She hated the crowd, hated the songs, and hated the fact that there were two drummers. I loved the energy, loved the crowd, and found the music pleasant (even if it wasn't that memorable). It was like we were at two completely different concerts.
We walked back to campus in the fog and I knew all was lost.
Even before she demanded I take her square dancing the next weekend.
Years later, at the edge of a different ocean, the fog rolled in again. And I went for a walk and realized that, although I've never owned an Adam and the Ants record, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for them. Because at least they don't play square dancing music.
It's late August and it's about a million degrees out.
So I'm spending too much time on the Internets watching videos of blizzards, hoping they'll cool me off.
So far, it's not working.
Which brings me to the Department of Ukulele Clash Covers. How did it happen that there's an entire thriving subculture of Ukulele Clash covers? Let me tell ya:
33 years ago, the Clash played a gig in Islington, opening for the Sex Pistols. Johnny Rotten, noting that the Sex Pistols had opened for the Joe Strummer's band the 101'ers four months earlier, told Joe Strummer that his career was headed in the wrong direction and soon the only way Strummer's songs would be heard would be when someone played them on the ukulele. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)
Strummer dismissed this as the clear ravings of a lunatic whose band would self-destruct after a single tour of the U.S. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)
Joe Strummer may have had a point. But he ignored what we all now know: Johnny Rotten is the Nostradamus of Punk.
My friend Jennifer held a party every year to celebrate Johnny Rotten's birthday.
It's not Johnny Rotten's birthday today (that was back on January 31st), but it is Jennifer's birthday -- so please celebrate it as you see fit. For me, it's more of a generic celebration.
After the Sex Pistols imploded, billionaire Richard Branson decided to cash in on Johnny Rotten (who bucked the marketing program and went back to his given name: John Lydon).
This was long before Branson was knighted (in 1999 for "services to entrepreneurship"), back when Branson ran Virgin records (first as a string of record stores -- later to be known as Mega Virginstores which, oddly enough, sold no virgins -- and then as an actual record label).
It was years before Branson's Virgin Records would lead to a long-simmering feud with XTC that caused the band to go on strike for six years (a strike that may have been more effective if anyone had known about it at the time).
In 1978, Branson thought Lydon's post-Sex Pistols band would be huge, if he could find the right musicians. So Branson flew Lydon to Jamaica and they spent weeks scouting local reggae players. Branson then flew Devo to Jamaica and tried to convince them to bring in Lydon as their new lead singer (they declined, although I still salivate at the thought of Johnny Rotten singing "Whip It").
What finally emerged from the ganja smoke was Public Image Ltd., where Lydon chanted (rather than shouting or really singing) over dub/reggae music. They edged away from the avant garde and closer to traditional songs and song structure over the next four records. Meanwhile, in the United States, there was a craze for "generic" brand products (sold in white packages with a distinctive blue typeface that had the type of product, such as "Beer" or "Breakfast Cereal").
By 1986, PiL had become a fairly standard rock band (albeit one with an off-kilter sound). As the music became more mainstream and commercial, it also became less distinct; maybe this was the type of meta-joke that let Lydon laugh all the way to the bank. The band parted ways with Virgin and Branson, signing to Elektra. Ginger Baker and Steve Vai (whom Johnny Rotten would have spit on a decade earlier) played on the new album, the generically titled Album (which was also known, depending on the format as Cassette or Compact Disc), with its single "Rise" (released as a 45 with a sleeve that just said "Single"). And even when Lydon proclaimed "anger is an energy," it came across less as a snarl and more as a tired grumble.
And, because it was 1986, it was inevitable that there would be a video (and perhaps unavoidable that it would be marked by the simple title "Video"):
It was ironic that Baker, drummer for Cream, one of the groups Johnny Rotten labeled as dinosaurs, participated... especially after Lydon, years earlier, made an April Fool's joke of announcing that Baker was joining Public Image Ltd. But the bigger irony was that, by completely subsuming music to product, Lydon obscured the fact that he had finally created something that could stand as music (and not just as attitude dressed up in musical clothing).
When I was growing up, the Rat Pack already seemed impossibly old and out of touch. And my friends and I puzzled over why people would ever pay attention to them.
Growing up, there was only one kid in school who listened to Frank Sinatra (and he would regularly wear a fedora, suspenders, and powder-blue boat shoes instead of scuffed-up jeans and sneakers). The school bullies thought his retro act was so weird that they left him alone (perhaps for fear of catching the virus that caused worship of Nelson Riddle).
So while most of our contemporaries needed a backbeat and electric guitars, my fedora-wearing friend was content with a big band and old Sinatra albums. And only the old albums. If you made the mistake of mentioning "My Way," he'd scoff and dismiss it as crap. It was a feeling Sinatra shared. And yet that song fueled his live act for nearly 30 years (and stoked demand for that live-act in the post-Beatles era).
Sure, Sinatra was too much of a showman and too musical to ever completely destroy a song. But still I can't help wondering if Sinatra, when he was doing this...
My friend Mark recently told me that Elvis Costello's Saturday Night Live performance from 1977 was online. The one that got him banned from the show for more than a decade (Costello, not my friend Mark).
In the Fall of 1977, SNL (then starting its third season) had become a phenomenon. Some considered it the comedic equivalent of punk rock -- a show for the young and hip that gave the finger to bloated mainstream television (and was years away from becoming bloated mainstream television itself).
For the third season, the producers announced an "Anyone Can Host" contest, with the winner hosting the last show before Christmas.
From the start, the entire contest was a sham. John Belushi had the idea of bringing the Sex Pistols to American TV and loved the idea of a little old lady introducing them. And while more than 100,000 people entered the contest, the only serious contenders were kindly grandmother types -- the older the better.
It's no surprise then that the winner was an 80-year old grandmother. Miskel Spillman lived in New Orleans and was more than willing to make fun of herself for being old. The stage was set for a little old lady to sic the Sex Pistols, widely considered the most dangerous punk rockers on the planet, on America.
Except the Sex Pistols were stuck in Toronto. The U.S. government refused to grant them visas or allow them into the country. So Elvis Costello was recruited as a last-minute replacement. Maybe not as good as the Sex Pistols, but hey, punk was punk.
The show opened with John Belushi sharing a joint with Miskel Spillman, who then acted stoned during her monologue (which included running jokes about how she had the munchies and craved fruit -- perhaps because older people aren't cool enough to want brownies or junk food). And just before midnight, the little old dutifully introduced Elvis Costello to America (and he sang "Watching the Detectives").
Costello's record company insisted that his second song would be "Less Than Zero" (which came from the album he was trying to promote, although the lyrics about unrepentant British fascist Oswald Mosley would make little sense to American audiences). Costello had performed the song in dress rehearsal and camera blocking was set up and finalized. But during the live show, Costello had a change of heart. After a few seconds of "Less Than Zero," he waved off the band and said "I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen, but there's no reason to sing this song here." He then launched into a blistering rendition of a new (and not yet released) song called "Radio Radio," a scathing indictment of the vapidity of radio programmers. (Link for email subscribers.)
Lorne Michaels went ballistic, screaming and vowing never to let Costello on SNL again. But SNL wanted a punk rocker (and punk is punk, right?), so maybe it shouldn't have been a complete surprise that Costello would do something punk.
But you live long enough, what was once considered dangerous becomes fodder for cocktail-party conversations. Elvis Costello mellowed, made up with Lorne Michaels, and was eventually invited back on SNL. He even made fun of his earlier appearance, interrupting a song by the Beastie Boys and then performing "Radio Radio" with them. It wasn't punk, it was slick, rehearsed, and self-congratulatory. (Youtube link for email subscribers)
(In a further nod to pop culture eating its own tail, Weird Al Yankovik has been known to sing "Radio Radio" at his concerts when technical problems arise.)
And now, more than 30 years later, radio is infinitely worse than it was in 1977. Elvis Costello's sincere, frantic, desparate warning that radio had fallen into the hands of "such a lot of fools trying to anesthetize the way that you feel" has become a punchline. But all you have to do is turn on your radio to realize the joke's really on us.
So far, it's not working.
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