Beyond the three-day weekends. Beyond burgers and barbecues. Beyond the unofficial start of summer and the promise of longer days and the freedom of warmer weather and school being out.
Memorial Day is about something else. It's a chance to remember and honor sacrifice.
I didn't understand that as a kid; probably no kids really do.
But the past several years, I've been rediscovering the real meaning of holidays like Memorial Day and Labor Day (which bookend summers in the U.S.).
Which brings me to what inexplicably is my favorite XTC song. (Which is far from their catchiest song or their best-known song or even their best-written song.)
The first time I heard this, it resonated with something deep inside me. The evocation that happens with the best music? Some kind of trapped intergenerational memory of another lifetime? I don't know.
But I knew the first time I heard this that it was profoundly meaningful to me. So on Memorial Day, there's only one song I want to hear:
Looking for adventure... and whatever comes our way
When I was a kid, it wasn't cool to like the music from the 60s. (Well, except maybe the Beatles; the Beatles were somehow beyond categorization.)
The flower-power movement quickly gave way to self-indulgence (which quickly and unintentionally became comedic). The psychedelia and experimentation turned darker and gave way to the realities of addiction and death.
The working-class rebels became the establishment, hiding out in castles that the common people could only dream about.
And when punk came around, it resonated and reflected the initial rebellion that formed rock and roll.
I loved punk because it always reminded me of the music of the 60s (but generally played a lot faster).
But for most of my friends, the word "hippie" was a high insult. And so when classic 60s movies would play in our local arthouse, I'd go. And usually there would only be 4 or 5 people there.
Yes, 60s movies (especially 60s rock movies) were often sprawling, incoherent, and self-indulgent. Yes, the stories often made no sense.
But there was something vital and vibrant about those movies. Even if the plots didn't make sense, the tone was usually clear. And that tone crackled and rang true in the same way that punk rock did.
RIP, Dennis Hopper. And thanks for helping me connect the dots between James Dean and the Ramones.
I like to imagine that there's a country somewhere where everyone loves power pop, where melodic guitars and great harmonies thrive like flowers in the sun. But whenever I try to book travel to that country, I can't find the nearest airport. So maybe it's not a country, maybe it's a city. Or a valley, nestled between mountains. And maybe I don't get there by plane, but by pontoon boat. Or through a few clicks on the internet.
I was reading Peter's Power Pop blog today and he posted a couple of songs by the Wellingtons (as he frequently does). It's hard not to like the Wellingtons and I was going to write about them. And while clicking through their YouTube videos, I found one where they talked about playing with the band Farah. And that band name sounded familiar, but I couldn't think of why.
But there on the "related videos" box of the Wellingtons video I was watching was this video by Farah:
You may want to listen to that song five or six times. Go ahead; I'll wait.
Click. One of the guys from Farrah produced a Wellingtons album. Click. Critics compare them to Squeeze and XTC and Fountains of Wayne. Click. Several Wellingtons appear in this cool video, which (like the Nines) channels the best of Paul McCartney, XTC, ELO, Fountains of Wayne, Marshall Crenshaw, Ben Folds, and just about every band I love:
Listening to Farrah, I had no idea where they were from. England? Australia? Sweden? Brooklyn? In the end it doesn't really matter. They live in that place where power pop thrives in the wild... and you don't even need a pontoon boat to get there.
The new Farrah album is out now in England and will be out in the U.S. in a couple weeks. In the meantime, visit their site or listen to the whole thing here on their super-cool widget thing:
Flamboyant Swedish pop-rock sound? Check. Absurd 80s key-tar? Check. Amazing sky and partially frozen sea? Check. Band seemingly floating away on a chunk of ice soon to be eaten by a polar bear? Check. Nom de Guerre's "Run Run Run" (h/t Swedesplease):
You want more? Need some charming tinkly keyboards and little-girl vocals? And maybe some zombies? And death imagery in a remote church? Lára Rúnarsdóttir's got what you need:
I guess it's just someone who looked a lot like I remember you do
Gretchen lived in a castle. Behind a moat. Fortified by alligators.
Okay, maybe not.
But Gretchen lived in the urban equivalent -- an art-deco apartment building whose penthouse had stained-glass windows. Up a steep winding hill. With no on-street parking.
And she knew all the local restaurants. Owners would greet her by name when she came in. Chefs would prepare her off-menu sampling menus.
The owner of the convenience store would give her flowers from the day before and she'd stick them in her hair.
She owned that city. But she didn't know it.
Everyone she was with knew it. But God help you if you mentioned it -- she hated talking about it, hated thinking about it.
She drove a 40-year-old European convertible that her mechanic had rebuilt nearly from scratch. She knew nothing about cars but everything about obscure tropical fruit.
And she'd sit up in the castle (okay, her second-story apartment in the art-deco building far below the penthouse) and sketch street scenes in half-filled sketch pads.
Everyone who spent time with her thought she was amazing. Because when you were around her, anything was possible.
Then she'd vanish. For weeks on end.
The restaurant owners would ask me about her because they'd seen us together once. And I didn't know anything, so I had nothing to say.
Then she'd come back -- convertible overflowing with exotic souvenirs from somewhere I could never spell that she'd pronounce perfectly. And the neighborhood would swell and flow back towards her. And for a while, everything seemed fine.
For a while, everything was possible again.
Until Gretchen vanished one last time. And took the convertible with her.
The chefs looked downcast whenever I'd see them. The mechanic sighed loudly and turned back to the brake job on the '88 Saab. And the convenience-store flowers turned brown and wilted out in the dumpster.
The castle was eventually torn down. But she never came back.
I moved across town. To an area whose streets weren't pulsing with memories of when she'd walked on them. To a street where some things were definitely impossible. To a place where the chefs didn't know her... and didn't know what they were missing.
I'd still sometimes think I saw Gretchen -- but she never reappeared. Eventually I left the city. Years later, she still appears every once in a while in the corner of my eye. And I still sometimes sense she's been here. But whenever I look around, she's gone.
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