All posts by Roger Moore

About Roger Moore

rocklobster3.JPGRoger Moore is a writer and musical obsessive who plays percussion instruments from around the world with an equal lack of dexterity. An environmental lawyer in his unplugged moments, he has written on subjects ranging from sustainable development practices to human rights and voting rights, as well as many music reviews. A native Chicagoan, Roger lives in Oakland, California with his wife Paula, who shares his Paul Weller fixation, and two young children, Amelia and Matthew, who enjoy dancing in circles to his Serge Gainsbourg records and falling asleep to his John Coltrane records.

Roger Moore’s Musical Timeline

1966. Dropped upside down on patio after oldest sister listened to “She Loves You” on the Beatles’ Saturday cartoon show. Ears have rung with the words “yeah, yeah, yeah” ever since.

1973. Memorized all 932 verses to Don McLean’s “American Pie.”

1975. Unsuccessfully lobbied to have “Louie Louie” named the official song of his grade school class. The teacher altered the lyrics of the winner, the Carpenters’ “I Won’t Last a Day Without You,” so that they referred to Jesus.

1977. After a trip to New Orleans, frequently broke drumheads attempting to mimic the style of the Meters’ Zigaboo Modeliste.

1979. In order to see Muddy Waters perform in Chicago, borrowed the birth certificate of a 27 year-old truck driver named Rocco.

1982. Published first music review, a glowing account of the Jam’s three-encore performance for the Chicago Reader. Reading the original, unedited piece would have taken longer than the concert itself.

1982. Spat on just before seeing the Who on the first of their 23 farewell tours, after giving applause to the previous band, the Clash.

1984. Mom: “This sounds perky. What’s it called?” Roger: “ It’s ‘That’s When I Reach for My Revolver’ by Mission of Burma.”

1985. Wrote first review of an African recording, King Sunny Ade’s Synchro System. A reader induced to buy the album by this review wrote a letter to the editor, noting that “anyone wishing a copy of this record, played only once” should contact him.

1985. At a Replacements show in Boston, helped redirect a bewildered Bob Stinson to the stage, which Bob had temporarily confused with the ladies’ bathroom.

1986. Walked forty blocks through a near-hurricane wearing a garbage bag because the Feelies were playing a show at Washington, D.C.’s 9:30 Club.

1987. Foolishly asked Alex Chilton why he had just performed “Volare.” Answer: “Because I can.”

1988. Moved to Northern California and, at a large outdoor reggae festival, discovered what Bob Marley songs sound like when sung by naked hippies.

1991. Attempted to explain to Flavor-Flav of Public Enemy that the clock hanging from his neck was at least two hours fast.

1992. Under the pseudonym Dr. Smudge, produced and performed for the Underwear of the Gods anthology, recorded live at the North Oakland Rest Home for the Bewildered. Local earplug sales skyrocketed.

1993. Attended first-ever fashion show in Chicago because Liz Phair was the opening act. Declined the complimentary bottles of cologne and moisturizer.

1997. Almost missed appointment with eventual wedding band because Sleater-Kinney performed earlier at Berkeley’s 924 Gilman Street. Recovered hearing days later.

1997. After sharing a romantic evening with Paula listening to Caetano Veloso at San Francisco’s Masonic Auditorium, purchased a Portuguese phrasebook that remains unread.

1998. Learned why you do not yell “Free Bird” at Whiskeytown's Ryan Adams in a crowded theater.

1999. During an intense bout of flu, made guttural noises bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Throat Singers of Tuva.

2000. Compiled a retrospective of music in the nineties as a fellow at the Coolwater Center for Strategic Studies and Barbecue Hut.

2001. Listened as Kahil El’Zabar, in the middle of a harrowing and funny duet show with Billy Bang, lowered his voice and spoke of the need to think of the children, whom he was concerned might grow up “unhip.”

2002. During a performance of Wilco’s “Ashes of American Flags,” barely dodged ashes of Jeff Tweedy’s cigarette.

2002. Arrived at the Alta Bates maternity ward in Berkeley with a world trance anthology specially designed to soothe Paula during Amelia’s birth, filled with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Ali Akbar Khan, and assorted other Khans. The project proved to be irrelevant to the actual process of labor.

2003. Emceed a memorable memorial concert for our friend Matthew Sperry at San Francisco’s Victoria Theater featuring a lineup of his former collaborators, including improvised music all-stars Orchesperry, Pauline Oliveros, Red Hot Tchotchkes, the cast of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Tom Waits.

2003. Failed to persuade Ted Leo to seek the Democratic nomination for President.

2005. Prevented two-year old daughter Amelia from diving off the balcony during a performance of Pierre Dorge’s New Jungle Orchestra at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival.

2006. On a family camping trip in the Sierra Nevadas, experienced the advanced stage of psychosis that comes from listening to the thirtieth rendition of Raffi’s “Bananaphone” on the same road trip.

Jacques Dutronc: 500 Billion Little Martians Can’t Be Wrong

Diatribes, Heavy Rotation

dutronc-cigarI only remembered it was Bastille Day an hour before it was over this Tuesday, but I knew just what I wanted to hear. Jacques Dutronc is a revered figure in his country’s rock history that remains a total obscurity to many stateside. That’s a shame, because if there’s one person who can demonstrate that “French rock” isn’t an oxymoron, it’s Jacques Dutronc. Dutronc’s music calls to mind the scene in the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night in which a reporter asked Ringo Starr if he was a mod or a rocker, and he responded, “I’m a mocker.”

Jacques Dutronc made being a mocker into an art form. The dapper Dutronc drew energy from sixties-era youth rebellion at the same time he skewered its narcissistic excesses in songs like the brilliant breakthrough single “Et Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi,” said to be an answer song to the Franco-Dylanisms of Antoine’s “Les Élucubrations d’Antoine.” Set to an insanely catchy thumping backbeat, Dutronc rattles off increasingly surreal population statistics (700 million Chinese, 50 million imperfect people, 500 billion little martians), while always placing himself in the forefront (“et moi”).

Whether he’s tackling prickly everyday problems (“Les Cactus”), flipping the bird to hypocritical swingers (the bachelor sendup “Les Playboys”), or lampooning armchair hippies (the sitar-tinged “Hippie Hippie Hourrah”), Dutronc is also smart enough to capture what’s compelling and cool about his subjects. As with his closest British counterpart, the Kinks’ Ray Davies, Dutronc’s ironic swagger would have fallen flat if his music weren’t equally forceful, and diverse enough to capture an occasional tender subject, like his affection for Paris in the morning (“Il est cinq heures, Paris s’eveille”). Too suave to really play garage rock, he still understood enough about its simple power to deliver on songs like “La fille du père Noël,” a Gallic spin on Bo Diddley’s “I’m a Man” that can hold its own with the Yardbirds’ cover of the Diddley ditty.

Two other central figures in Jacques Dutronc’s world deserve special mention. First, Dutronc’s longtime muse, collaborator, and wife of almost three decades is Francoise Hardy, the classiest and arguably the most talented of the French ye-ye pop singers (their son is the jazz guitarist Thomas Dutronc). Still gorgeous well into her sixties, Hardy became an accomplished singer-songwriter who has remained open-minded enough to collaborate with everyone from Blur and Air to Iggy Pop.

Second, most of the credit for Jacques Dutronc’s droll commentary is owed to his songwriting partner Jacques Lanzmann, a twentieth-century Renaissance man whose odd career found him, at various times, as a welder, truck driver, copper miner, painter, founder of a men’s magazine, travel show host, and author of 40 novels. Lanzmann, whose brother Claude directed the Holocaust epic Shoah, also escaped a Nazi death squad as a teenager, reputedly because he was determined “not to die a virgin.” Now that’s French resistance!

Jacques Dutronc, ““Et Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi”

Jacques Dutronc, “Les Cactus”

Jacques Dutronc, “La Fille Du Père Noël”

The King of California

Heavy Rotation, Quick Shots

newdave_2When the last firecracker fades and the light grows dim, there’s no better way to close out the Fourth of July than with a Dave Alvin trilogy. This isn’t “Americana”; this is America. The three songs below are from Alvin’s 1994 acoustic showcase, King of California, which includes then-new material and earthy reworkings of a few Alvin songs from his tenure as lead guitarist for the Blasters, and briefly for X. X turned “Fourth of July” into an anthem, but Alvin’s less explosive version gets under your skin with its portrait of a weary lover on the stairs, smoking a cigarette alone. These songs aren’t exactly free of melodrama–the title track sounds like a lost Marty Robbins gunfighter ballad, down to the last bullet in the chest–but they’re unsentimental in their refusal to treat their subjects simply as heroes or villains. Alvin knows there’s “an evil in this land” as well as any protest singer, but his metaphors creep up on you instead of hitting you over the head:

There’s a barn burning, baby
No I can’t say who’s to blame
No one knows who did it, baby
And you’d best not ask my name.

I can’t listen to Dave Alvin’s King of California without thinking about the fascinating book of the same name by Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman. The King of California explains how a family of relocated cotton farmers from Georgia maneuvered to build one of the world’s largest agriculture enterprises in the world in California’s Central Valley. Often operating under the radar, the Boswells wielded such power that they were able to make rivers run backward and drain to dust Tulare Lake, which had been the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi. The “king” of the book’s title, J.G. Boswell, who passed away earlier this year, was a study in contradictions: a rugged individualist who grew his empire with government subsidies; an agricultural visionary who displaced scores of family farmers; a Stanford man who lost two fingers in a cattle roping accident. He’d make a great subject for a Dave Alvin song.

Dave Alvin, “Fourth of July”

Dave Alvin, “Barn Burning”

Dave Alvin, “King of California”

The Aviator, Part II: Sky Saxon

Diatribes, Slow Jams

Baby, baby, I can’t let go
I got the Seeds on the stereo….

The Zeros, “Wild Weekend”

seedsLast Thursday, the world lost a musical pioneer known for his childlike wonder. He sealed his reputation making joyful noise, yet also seemed doomed to tiptoe through fields of anguish and despair. The singer precisely captured his moment in time. But in his increasingly strange last decades, he seemed to come from another planet, so absorbed in his restless search for solace that his oddness overshadowed his moments of unalloyed pop brilliance.

I speak, of course, of Sky Saxon, singer and bassist for the psychedelic garage band innovators the Seeds. Los Angeles-based writer and radio host Ken Levine aptly described Saxon’s music as “a mix of hard rock, blues, peyote, and not sleeping for several weeks.” Overshadowed in his time by hitmakers like the Kingsmen and the Troggs, and later by the likes of Love and the Doors, he continued the trend even in death, passing away within hours of a better-known guy who fancied himself as the King of Pop. Saxon and the Seeds were inconsistent and erratic, and their most fertile period was short-lived. But at their best, they produced relentless mini-anthems filled with love and danger. “Pushin’ Too Hard,” my favorite of these, is as compelling as anything in the Jacksons’ catalogues, and meant more to me personally.

Sky Saxon was also known as Richard Marsh, a Mormon kid from Utah and former doo-wop bandleader who discovered he could make his voice sound like Mick Jagger swallowing gasoline. When he moved to California and formed the Seeds in the mid-Sixties, his new moniker fit nicely with a new band taking flight, first with the roar of proto-punk garage rock and later with the birdlike flight patterns of flower power. The Seeds discovered trippy keyboards before the Doors, and were unleashing raw power before the Stooges. They were their best at their simplest, exemplifying Woody Guthrie’s dictum that if you use more than two chords, you’re showing off. It’s fitting that Saxon’s final days were spent in Austin, stomping grounds for fellow psych-garage head cases both old (Roky Erickson) and new (the Black Angels).

If the Seeds were a movie, they would have been a grainy, no-budget independent film that lingers in the memory longer than last year’s big-budget Oscar winner. They were a little scary, but they played with heart. Saxon wound up ingesting too many of the Sixties’ finest pharmaceuticals and joining a spiritual cult, but he remained a charismatic and inspirational figure to musicians. The Seeds remained his signature group, and they were as seminal as the name implies. Muddy Waters loved the Seeds so much that he described them as “America’s own Rolling Stones,” and wrote the liner notes to one of Saxon’s lesser side projects, an attempt at garage/ blues fusion. Joey Ramone claimed that listening to the Seeds’ “Pushin’ Too Hard” inspired him to sing, and the Ramones later covered a second Seeds standard, “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine.” I’m pretty sure the Ramones also took haircut tips from the Seeds.

The most heartfelt tribute I’ve seen to Saxon’s legacy came from Los Angeles native Nels Cline, whose genre-bending guitar work has found him collaborating with everyone from Charlie Haden to Mike Watt to Willie Nelson, fronting his own improvised music group, and playing lead for the fiery nineties roots-punk combo the Geraldine Fibbers on the way to his current lead duties with Wilco. In an obituary last week, Cline described Saxon as his first rock idol, not simply for the Seeds’ music, but for the charisma he exuded while appearing on TV programs with names like “Boss City” and “The Groovy Show.” Cline wrote that he “would stare in disbelief as he—clad in shiny satin Nehru shirts bedazzled with some gaudy brooch—would gyrate around lasciviously, holding the microphone in every cool way imaginable. He seemed from another planet.” Years later, Cline ran into an aging hippie at Trader Joe’s with an unmistakable style, and you can guess who it was. Saxon and Cline went on to play an improvised set, using the name Flower God Men and their Assistants. The flower god man has taken his final flight, but the thrill ride continues.

The Seeds, “Pushin’ Too Hard”

The Seeds, “Mr. Farmer”

If a deep, slow groove with big implications for globalization are your bag, all 10.5 minutes of “900 Million People Daily All Makin’ Love” should be required listening:

[audio:http://stuckbetweenstations.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/900million.mp3]

The Aviator, Part I: Michael Jackson

Diatribes, Slow Jams

Can you just imagine digging up the King,
Begging him to sing
About the heavenly mansions Jesus mentioned….
He went walking on the water with his pills.

Warren Zevon, “Jesus Mentioned”

broad_inaugural_12When Elvis left the building a generation ago at what seemed then the very advanced age of 42, I loved a few of his songs, but mainly considered him a bloated, Eskimo Pie-addicted man-cartoon that some kids’ parents liked. Only later did I discover what the fuss was about: the Memphis truck driver getting “real, real gone” in the magical Sun Sessions; the swaggering sex machine; the out-of-control mystery train that not even a dozen corny movies and a thousand prescriptions could completely derail. No wonder even Nixon cited Elvis as the explanation for the Bermuda triangle (“Elvis needs boats”).

This week, at the young, tender age of 50, another larger-than-life man-cartoon made an inglorious exit. Like Presley, Michael Jackson walked on water, first with his brilliance and later with his pills. And as with Elvis, I dismissed most of what he did long before he left. But MJ was an arresting presence even for those who, like me, did my best to ignore him. Elvis even seems an inadequate comparison for his stratospheric global reach. A closer comparison might be Howard Hughes, another man-child of erratic brilliance, whose master aviator’s soaring heights later gave way to reclusive paranoia and heartbreaking tailspin.

For now I will set aside the aspects of Michael Jackson’s life better left to the justice system and to his maker. As an admiring non-fan, I’ll count down five of his huge accomplishments:

1. He Liberated Eastern Europe from Communism.

Who do you think accomplished this, Reagan and Gorbachev? Please. The invasion of Afghanistan was bad enough, but the Kremlin’s most self-destructive act was its 1985 decision not to censor a vinyl version of Thriller. Long before MJ built a 35-foot statue of himself in Prague, his invisible gloved hand shook like a thousand Adam Smiths, securing our opportunity to visit McDonald’s in Vilnius.

Michael Jackson, HIStory Teaser

2. He Made Globalization Irreversible.

Don’t blame him for the shortcomings of NAFTA, GATT and world-beat fusion music. The new century would still be inconceivable without globalization, and MJ was its mascot. If there’s any doubt, listen to Caetano Veloso’s version of “Billie Jean.”

Caetano Veloso, “Billie Jean”

3. He Stopped Quincy Jones from Making Bad Solo Records.

Quincy Jones has a great ear for talent other than his own. Long ago, Q made five-martini bachelor pad classics like “Soul Bossa Nova,” which featured the amazing Rahsaan Roland Kirk. But by the late seventies, he’d spent far too much time making lame film soundtracks. Soon after Q started mentoring MJ, he woke up and started sailing the high seas of Eighties soul-funk cheese, producing bizarre period classics such as 1981’s The Dude, which even features a zany cover of a song by Ian Dury and the Blockheads sideman Chaz Jankel. The Dude abides.

Quincy Jones, “Soul Bossa Nova”

Soul Bossa Nova (Tema da Nike) – Quincy Jones

4. His Voice Was Better than Your Favorite Singer’s Voice.

Maybe that’s stretching it. Still, once you get beyond the tabloid crassness, Jackson had a voice so divinely inspired that comparisons are almost unfair. Production values and taste are things that can be questioned, and I’ve criticized those in most of his work. But his abilities were already astonishing by the time the J5 featured his preteen lead on “I Want You Back.”

Jackson Five, “I Want You Back”

5. He was Jackie Robinson in Aviator Glasses.

It’s hard to describe how segregated most of the pop mainstream was at the end of the seventies, with much of white America (including me) still in “Disco Sucks” mode and rap still emerging from the underground. Off the Wall and Thriller shattered that rigidity. If the path that followed has had some cracks in the pavement—like having to endure Fred Durst limply pretending to be funky—MJ still helped prepare the country and the planet for their multiracial future.

Indian version of “Thriller”


Funny videos

Mayra Andrade’s Lunar Mission

Heavy Rotation, Rants and Raves

mayraI enjoy cathartic, noisy racket as much as just about anyone, but there are times when I just need music to transport me breathlessly and rapturously to a magical place I’d never see on my own. As a little kid with a homemade cardboard rocket, I remember hearing Julie London’s version of “Fly Me to the Moon” and not admitting to my friends how much that song played with my head. A more contemporary lunar mission can be found on Mayra Andrade‘s gorgeous “Lua,” one of the high points of her excellent debut album, Navega. That album has gained Cape Verde more recognition than any record since Cesaria Evora‘s 1992 landmark, Miss Perfumado. The earthy Evora mostly sings in the mournful morna style, which makes me think of Portuguese fado. Andrade sings stirring mornas as well, but she also sounds more like the world traveler she is (she was born in Cuba, and in addition to Cape Verde, has lived in Germany, Angola, Senegal, and her current Paris).

As a teenager, Andrade became entranced with the music of one of my favorite singers, Brazil’s Caetano Veloso, whose fluid shifts between the breathy parts and the rapturous parts are echoed on Navega. She also had the opportunity to work with Orlando Pantera, credited in his country with revolutionizing the traditional Cape Verdean batuque. Sadly, Pantera died in 2001, reportedly on the day before he was supposed to go to Paris to work on his debut record.

The album version of Andrade’s “Lua” has the rhythmic intensity Pantera became known for, but the acoustic version below provides a clearer opportunity to focus on Andrade’s otherworldly voice.

Mayra Andrade, “Lua”

Sandpaper and Velvet: Koko Taylor’s Chicago

Rants and Raves

kokoIf I had the opportunity to replay video footage of my entire life (a horrifying prospect, for those who haven’t seen the Albert Brooks movie Defending Your Life), I could pinpoint the precise moment where music became more than just background noise and started to become a passionate life force. While still in elementary school, I stumbled upon a free music festival in my native Chicago, and noticed an unfamiliar name on the stage sign: Koko Taylor and her Blues Machine.

On first glance, I could tell Ms. Taylor was roughly old enough to be my mom–that is, if my mom were half a foot taller, the daughter of Tennessee sharecroppers, and dressed in a glittery evening gown. But when she started singing, I entered a different world, never to return. I’d had a few experiences with live music before, including an encounter with a lame local band called Styx, but nothing in the world I knew prepared me for her complete command of the stage, and for a voice that sounded like it had been raised on a diet of sandpaper and velvet, with an extra helping of sandpaper. The first song I remember hearing–I’d later learn it was a cover of Irma Thomas‘s first big hit, the self-explanatory “You Can Have My Husband (But Don’t Mess with My Man)”–was inappropriate grade-school listening at its finest, especially in its recounting of the two male rivals’ mismatched sample menus (husband serves red beans and rice, man “keeps me in steaks,” and this being the midwest, red meat wins in a landslide).

The truly magic moment came later in the show, when Koko ripped into her signature song, “Wang Dang Doodle,” with a force that sounded like it could travel halfway to Wisconsin. Koko’s tornado of a voice made a perfect match for one of of unsung hero Willie Dixon‘s many brilliant compositions (Dixon himself reportedly thought the song was a silly trifle, but that’s why we don’t ask artists to critique their own songs). Topical songs and complicated poetic songs will come and go, but “Wang Dang Doodle” is timeless. I think of it as a classic work of Chicago architecture, in which form follows function without a wasted line or note. Deceptively simple, “Doodle” works simultaneously as cryptic secret code, melodramatic short story, risque nursery rhyme, and kick-ass empowerment anthem (to this day, when I have moments of doubt, I think to myself, “I’m gonna break out all the windows, I’m gonna kick down all the doors”).

“Wang Dang Doodle” has been covered by everyone from Howlin’ Wolf to P.J. Harvey, but Taylor’s remains the best. (In the 1967 version below, Taylor gets great accompaniment from harmonica virtuoso Little Walter, and eleven-fingered guitarist Hound Dog Taylor.) This week, obituaries reported that Koko Taylor passed away, that she won a bunch of awards, and that some called her the queen of the blues. But none of that would convey why, when I broke that news to my kids, all of us started crying. Someday when they’re older, they’ll have moments of doubt and need to find the strength to kick down all the doors. And I hope I’m still there to sing “Wang Dang Doodle” for them, all night long.

Koko Taylor, “Wang Dang Doodle”

Heavy Metal Drummer

Diatribes

lars-ulrich-denmarkI’m a walking bag of contradictions. In my mind’s eye, I am free of bigotry, but as soon as someone I don’t know walks in the room, I immediately start sizing up the music they listen to, based upon their appearance and wardrobe alone. Typically, the set of associations goes something like this:

Ann Taylor pantsuit: Natalie Merchant
Polo shirt, khakis, possible African choker: Vampire Weekend
Tie-dye T-shirt, jeans, over 35: Dead, Phish
Tie dye T-shirt, under 35: Fleet Foxes
Business suit, two ties: Wazmo Nariz (to get that one, it helps if you were in Chicago around 1980)

Too often, my stereotypical associations turn out to be, well, right on the money. That’s what made it gratifying to learn last month that I was dead wrong about the musical inclinations of America’s left-leaning sweetheart, MSNBC pundit Rachel Maddow. I would have suspected her to favor the gentle and droll—some Belle and Sebastian here, some Jens Lekman there. Judging from the glasses she sometimes wears in interviews, perhaps some Buddy Holly or Elvis Costello would enter the mix.

rachelBut metal? That would bring back memories of the epic Terry Gross/ Gene Simmons smackdown from a few years ago. I would have judged mild-mannered Maddow more likely to be a pastor of muppets than a master of puppets (and yes, she has drawn a muppet analogy to the decline of the American auto industry). Yet before an interview with Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, the Rhodes scholar blushingly described herself as a “fangirl.” Maddow displayed the “Enter Sandman” ring tone on her Blackberry and described how the Master of Puppets album changed her life when she was fifteen. And the fan-love went both ways; in a recent Time feature, Ulrich put the Rachel Maddow Show on the short list of his favorite things, right up there with tightrope artist Philippe Petit and Mark Rothko, who loved black even more than the average Metallica fan.

I’m by no stretch a metalhead; to me, Howlin’ Wolf makes James Hetfield sound like a girlyman. But I appreciated Maddow’s explanation of how Master of Puppets’ cathartic rush became the soundtrack to everything she wasn’t expected or supposed to do as a teenager. And Ulrich did his part to mess with my stereotype of the heavy metal drummer, which essentially comes from the Spinal Tap theory that they’re interchangeable and likely to spontaneously explode (“Most of them died in their sleep while playing,” explained Tap’s David St. Hubbins.) On the show, Ulrich, the diminutive Dane and Michael Keaton lookalike, chatted up the virtues of social democracy and San Francisco tolerance. When Rachel asked Lars his reaction to Metallica’s music being used to harass prisoners during the Iraq War, he shrugged it off: “I could name 30 Norwegian death metal bands who make Metallica sound like Simon and Garfunkel.”

Rachel Maddow interviews Metallica’s Lars Ulrich

Wilco, “Heavy Metal Drummer”

Stuck in the Middle with Flu

Diatribes

The noble quest of Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter to be the keystone in the Senate’s archway may have ruined his chance to sing with Senator Orrin Hatch and the Osmonds. Switching parties was a drastic step, but I personally blame the EPA for years of inaction. For two decades, scientists have warned that the habitat which once allowed Moderatus Republicanus to spawn and thrive was in startling decline. A generation ago, mild-mannered moderates roaming the Americas could count on the opportunity, given the right connections, to support charities with Nelson Rockefeller, shop for V-neck sweaters with Eliot Richardson, build log cabins at the Log Cabin Club, and listen to Edward Brooke sing Marvin Gaye songs for Barbara Walters.

But those days are long gone. Although Moderatus Republicanus is occasionally still seen in the Maine wilderness and the Austrian parts of California, the species may already be doomed to suffer the same fate as the passenger pigeon and the Whig Party. Experts begged for action after Pat Buchanan’s 1992 convention speech, which the late Molly Ivins described as better in the original German, but little was done to reverse the tide, and we all know what missions were accomplished in the last eight years.

The extinction event for this troubled species quite likely came earlier this week. I speak not of Specter’s defection, but a television interview in which the delightfully perky Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann found it “interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter.” Ever the nuanced orator, she clarified that “I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.” Another “interesting coincidence” she may have overlooked is that the swine flu epidemic occurred when Gerald Ford was president, as Chevy Chase would have gladly told her. Ouch.

Meanwhile, Senator Specter’s struggle for survival will require serious musical inspiration, and serious intestinal fortitude, as he shares metamucil with Joe Lieberman and finds his seat at the cafeteria table with Ben Campbell, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, and Evan Bayh. The survival of a species is always precarious. But only time will test zoologist Jim Hightower’s prediction that in the future, nothing will remain in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.

Stealers Wheel, “Stuck in the Middle with You”

M.I.A., “Bird Flu”


M.I.A. –
bird flu – M.I.A

Pretenders, “Middle of the Road”

The Feelies: School of Rock, Graduate Division

Rants and Raves

Just shy of 23 years ago, when I shared a tiny apartment in D.C. with two music-obsessed buddies, a staggering collection of vinyl, and zero umbrellas, I walked a few miles in an insane rainstorm wearing a garbage bag to see the Feelies play the 9:30 Club, and it was worth every soggy step. On another grey day a month ago, I traveled 3000 miles on a redeye in time to see the Feelies play again in the 9:30 Club (now no longer at 930 F Street, but with more space, better ventilation and non-poisonous drinks). One of the least prolific great bands ever and one of the few that roll as much as they rock, the Feelies played as if they’d never skipped a single kinetic beat during their 17-year hiatus. Once the hyperactive teenage pride of Haledon, New Jersey, they’re holding their own as the quadragenarians with perpetual nervousness. “Reunion” doesn’t quite do justice to their recent shows, which come off more like an alternate history of popular music, as it might have sounded if smart people had ruled the world.

As a longtime fan who witnessed the show astutely observed, the Feelies played as if they were holding a clinic on how to be a rock band. This wouldn’t be their first academic adventure. Long ago, billed as the Willies (one of several alternate monikers used by their shifting alliances, along with the Trypes and Yung Wu), they played the high school reunion scene in Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild. If the Ramones were lifers in rock and roll high school, the Feelies are custom-built for graduate school, from their Aldous Huxley-inspired band name to their role in inspiring Rick Moody’s novel Garden State (not to be confused with the Zach Braff movie/ Shins vehicle).

If that pedigree sounds a shade uppity, rest assured that Feelies University is a place with little pretension and truckloads of rock and roll fun. Here’s a sample curriculum:

• Velvet Revolver (Professors Mercer and Million)
No, not that Velvet Revolver. In this class, the affably mysterious guitarist/ singer Glenn Mercer and perpetually grumpy rhythm guitarist Bill Million demonstrate how to mesh the shimmering legacies of the late Velvet Underground and the Beatles’ Revolver. While some contemporary lessons come from Mercer’s solo 2007 return to form, Wheels in Motion, this could not be a Feelies course without the participation of Million, newly returned from his lengthy, self-imposed Florida exile.

• More Cowbell (Professor Weckerman)
Feelies percussionist Dave Weckerman (not the drummer, the percussionist) shows how just the right amount of cowbell—or woodblock, or maracas, or triangle, or virtually anything you can bang—helps turn a song into an adventure.

• Crazy Rhythms (Professors Demeski and Sauter)
Rhythm masters Stanley Demeski and Brenda Sauter weren’t yet in the Feelies for their exhilarating and hard-to-find debut Crazy Rhythms, which featured Keith DiNunzio on bass and drummer Anton “Andy” Fier before he went downtown to work with the Lounge Lizards and Golden Palominos. But they’ve mastered the art, and were the anchors of the Feelies’ three remaining albums. While neither is flashy, together they create an unshakable pulse.

• Advanced Band Dynamics (Full Faculty)
There’s a time and place for bone-crunching 4/4 rhythms, but that’s in Professor Young’s AC/DC seminar. If you want a song to whisper and twist and turn and howl and pounce, slip into something like the Feelies’ “Slippping (Into Something).”

• Undercover Studies (Full Faculty)
Learn to cover the Velvets (“What Goes On,” “Real Good Time”), the Beatles (“She Said She Said”), Neil Young (“Barstool Blues”), the Modern Lovers (“I Wanna Sleep in Your Arms”), and Patti Smith (“Dancing Barefoot”) in a single show and add something fresh to each of them. Surprise final exam: cover “Boxcars (Carnival of Sorts)” from REM’s debut Chronic Town, which way back then came off like a rural southern take on the Feelies–that is, before the Feelies raised the ante with their own pastoral soundscape, The Good Earth.

The Feelies are reportedly working on long-anticipated reissues of Crazy Rhythms and The Good Earth. In the meantime, crawl through locusts, pestilence or whatever else stands in your path to see them if you get the chance.

Feelies, “The Boy with Perpetual Nervousness” (instrumental version)

Feelies, “Higher Ground”

Feelies, “Dancing Barefoot”

Feelies, “Crazy Rhythm”

Zooey and the Terabithians

Heavy Rotation

Sometimes after seeing a movie with memorable music, I later discover that the best songs are missing from the soundtrack. This recently happened with my six-year old daughter Amelia’s favorite, Bridge to Terabithia, which moves from tween fantasy fare to thorny and honestly portrayed realist drama once the music starts to take hold.

An unlikely trio of covers, missing from the Disney-dominated official soundtrack, gives the movie its real spark. The music teacher, played by the almost-famous chanteuse Zooey Deschanel, leads the kids through “Someday” by Steve Earle, “Why Can’t We Be Friends” by War, and “Ooh Child” by the Five Stairsteps. War’s socially conscious low-riding funk and the Stairsteps’ wide-eyed Chicago soul can hold their own on any playlist. But “Someday,” Steve Earle’s early anthem of longing and escape, has acquired a magical power for my daughter and me. I pull out an acoustic guitar, stumble through a few clumsily played licks, and listen to my urban-dwelling, public transportation-loving little girl belt out the lyrics—“I’ve got a ’67 Chevy, it’s low and sleek and black/ someday I’ll put her on the Interstate and never look back”—like she has just discovered the missing link between Haggard and Springsteen. I have no idea how or why they make perfect sense to her, but I know it must be time for a really good road trip.

At this point, Zooey is better known for being ridiculously charming than for her singing and songwriting. But last year’s minor classic She and Him (she wrote most of the songs, with music by M. Ward’s “him”) resonates more than I expected. The music mixes Motown-inspired soul (right down to the Smokey Robinson cover) with the urbane country shuffle of George Jones and his duet partners. Not everything works, but the best of these, like the subtle “Black Hole” and the sparkling “This is Not a Test,” sound timeless rather than simply nostalgic. These songs won’t set the house on fire, but Zooey’s voice has a quiet power that reminds me ever so slightly of—dare I say it?—Karen Carpenter. There, I just said it.

For a video of Steve Earle’s “Someday,” click here.

For a video of War’s “Why Can’t We Be Friends,” click here.

Zooey Deschanel, “Someday” (from Bridge to Terabithia)

She and Him, “Black Hole”

Five Stairsteps, “Ooh Child”