Some Songs Considered

“Kiss Me On the Bus” – The Replacements
(Words/music: Paul Westerberg, available on Tim, Sire 1985) 

Elsewhere on this blog, I wrote about how Paul Westerberg’s lyrics in many of my favorite Replacements songs drew on both adolescent spirit and the wisdom of hindsight.  Of course, this is only something that resonated with me once I reached a comfortable distance from my teenage years.  I first loved the Replacements as a teenager because these songs made a lot of sense when a lot of things stopped.  It also helped that these songs were often exciting, loud, energetic, and generally clever – all of the qualities I wanted to emulate even if I didn’t know how to go about doing that. 

My introduction to the band even ties into one of the quintessential teenage experiences.  I bought my first Replacements album the same day as my first date.

Appropriately (whether it’s based on the kind of teenager who becomes a Replacements’ obsessive or because you know me personally), I didn’t quite realize that it was a date until after the fact; a friend of mine convinced me to go to the homecoming dance with her, and I was too thick to read past “it would be fun if we went together.”  Regardless, I don’t quite remember why, but the afternoon before the dance I ended up at Circuit City and came home with Tim.  Whether I went out specifically to buy the record or that I had previously read about it and found it at a reasonable price, I came home and gave it my first listen on my boom box while I cleaned myself up for my first semi-formal dance.  I imagine that the giddiness in the first half of the album, particularly on “Kiss Me on the Bus” either resonated with me or fed into my nervousness.

It’s odd how memories and associations start to shift over the years.  A lot of the songs on Tim tie in to specific points in my life (“Bastards of Young” became the anthem of my aimless years, and “Left of the Dial” became my college radio show’s calling card), and the lingering memory of that first date (with no offense intended – it was a lovely evening) is the preparation for it, including coming home and putting on Tim for the first time.  The first half of side A, whether spinning on my turntable in my apartment or funneling through my earphones in the grocery store, always seems to find a way to bring a small part of me back to a time in my life where “lather-rinse-repeat” felt like the best idea in the world.

More on The Replacements: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“And She Was” – Talking Heads
(Words/music: David Byrne, available on Little Creatures, Sire 1985)

If I asked you to ignore the audio box at the top of this post and the two lines identifying the song and album and start listing off Talking Heads songs, I’d imagine that most of you would go through a decent number before getting to “And She Was.”  I’m not condemning that because I’d be the same way.  I suppose it’s more to point out that we levy more attention toward the band’s more complex beginnings, be it the eccentricities of their first couple albums or the Funkadelic-borrowing juggernaut the band became in the early 1980s.  These recordings require effort to untie and ultimately reward this close scrutiny with new wrinkles gradually revealed over time.  Naturally, spending more time immersed in Remain in Light puts those songs in more immediate memory.

That being said, the art of “And She Was” lies in the minimal attention it demands.  This isn’t a whirlwind of Adrian Belew or a twisted string of words.  Instead, David Byrne (who started to elbow out the rest of his band by this point) put all of the pieces together with the same care that the band assembled previous records, only this time with brighter and lighter tones.  The arpeggios in the verse ring brightly, the wood block pops during the chorus, and the electric guitar turns up at just the right point at the end of the song.  Even Byrne’s vocal tics find a place in the song, most notably in the “has” and “hips” in the final chorus.  However, it’s the unbridled joy in Byrne’s voice in the repeated “hey”s in the final pre-chorus that perhaps best characterizes the song.  The band wrote plenty of simple songs (“Thank You for Sending Me an Angel,” “Heaven,” and “This Must Be the Place,” to name a few), and even if “And She Was” doesn’t rival the band’s most artfully constructed compositions, it deserves a place in the discussion of the band’s greatness.  Or, if you’re anything like me, it deserves more recognition for the number of times I turn it up in the car and sing along.

More on Talking Heads: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Everybody Wants to Rule the World” – Tears for Fears
(Words/music: Chris Hughes, Roland Orzabal, and Ian Stanley, available on Songs from the Big Chair, Mercury 1985)  

For matters of context, the Allmusic guide usually steers me in the right direction.  On Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” Stewart Mason writes that the song “was designed for one main purpose: to crack the US charts in a big way, which it in fact did.”  Using the band’s icier prior output as a point of comparison, Mason describes this song as “big” and “anthemic,” both appropriate terms for a song honing in on our universal desire for control.  Still, when I think of something sounding “anthemic,” I think of something that aims its sights at the peaks (think of all those U2 anthems playing in ESPN’s World Cup commercials right now).  In one sense, the one Mason sets in his Allmusic writeup, the intention is there in the band’s targeting of the American airwaves.  However, just from listening to the song, this sounds too effortless to strike me as a true “anthem.”

I should clarify that I mean “effortless” as high praise here; it takes a tremendous amount of skill to make something sound easy, and that’s what I feel happening here.  The melody rolls from one note into the next, gently climbing higher and higher as if gravity ceased working.  Even the drum beat, particularly the light touch on the hi-hat on the upbeats, hides its technical prowess beneath a laid-back demeanor.  And the guitar solos feel like a couple musicians just trading solos without paying attention to the red light in the recording booth.  I’m always left with the feeling of the song rolling along unencumbered rather than it reaching for the summit, and that’s the song’s strongest appeal to me.  After all, most of us wouldn’t want the responsibilities that come with ruling the entire world – we just want the power to make our lives easier.

More on Tears for Fears: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Take the Skinheads Bowling” – Camper Van Beethoven
(Words/music: Victor Krummenacher, David Lowery, Chris Molla, and Jonathan Segel, available on Telephone Free Landslide Victory, Cooking Vinyl 1985) 

Two chords in the verse and a third introduced in the chorus, and that’s it for “Take the Skinheads Bowling.”  If I didn’t know all the trouble I had getting a F chord to sound good when I first started playing, I’d recommend this song for beginners new to the guitar.  Hell, it would be a lot better of a song for random dude at a party to pick up the guitar and start playing.  It would at least make things a little more interesting. 

I cite the simplicity of the chords only to set the context for my desire to over-analyze the lyrics.  I’ve spent most of my intellectual life training myself in close reading, and with that comes the tendency to look deeper than necessary in some occasions.  With “Take the Skinheads Bowling,” it’s a fruitless exercise trying to find some kind of motif.  It’s unnecessary as well, as it’s a goofy, fun song that might be ruined by a line-by-line analysis.  If anything, I’m tipped only by the final verse and its repetition of the phrase “had a dream” followed by the different images.  If the whole song is meant as a series of oddly related dream images, then it explains some of the oddities.  Then again, the dreams are bookended by dreams that he “forgot what it was” and “nothing,” so perhaps not.

Crap, I fell into the trap.  I’m just going to stop and practice these chords.  Where’s my guitar?

More on Camper Van Beethoven: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Terms of Psychic Warfare” – Hüsker Dü
(Words/music: Grant Hart, available on New Day Rising, SST 1985)

The verses in “Terms of Psychic Warfare” feel like a cousin to “Wild Thing” or other similar 1960s garage rock songs.  It has the same kind of repetitive riff and even Grant Hart’s vocal cadence reminds me of the extended pauses between lines.  That being said, “Terms of Psychic Warfare” is the distorted, slightly twisted take on garage rock, pushing the tinny guitars to the front of the mix and sticking Hart’s somewhat mumbled lyrics further back into the mix.  Ultimately, these cousins share the same loose garage-rock feel and lo-fi production aesthetics.

Of course, “Terms of Psychic Warfare” isn’t, to echo one of 2009’s recurring debate, great because it’s lo-fi; it’s a great song that transcends its production limits.  Even with Hüsker Dü’s standard production budget, the coarseness doesn’t preclude ability both as performers and as arrangers.  Bob Mould’s feedback-heavy guitar contrasts Greg Norton’s carefully plucked bass line, giving the song its strange pseudo-Spectorian wall of feedback beneath Hart’s rantings.  There are even harmony vocals deep in the mix, eeking out just enough to hint at their presence after several listens.  The song’s deceptiveness masks its assets beneath the treble-laden surface yet gives it enough charm to make it interesting many listens later.  Whether it’s embellishing on the garage rock form or funneling an entire lifetime of listening through the sound available to them, Hüsker Dü’s songs like “Terms of Psychic Warfare” warrant a reputation that expands beyond simple shredding.

More on Husker Du: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Hold My Life” – The Replacements
(Words/music: Paul Westerberg, available on Tim, Sire Records 1985)

I hold the Replacements so dearly because I fell in love with the band as a teenager.  I went out on the afternoon of my first date in high school and bought a copy of Tim. I can’t remember why – if I went out specifically to buy it, or if I was going out to blow off steam and came across it incidentally.  Regardless, I have a vivid memory getting ready for the homecoming dance with the first two thirds of Tim playing in the boombox next to me.  I remember the circumstances behind the acquisition of most of the Replacements records I own in fact, but my association with Tim stays with me the most.  Today I wonder if Tim is my favorite Replacements album because it has my favorite songs on it, or if it has my favorite songs on it because of the numerous personal connections I have with the album. 

I share this because my experience with The Replacements isn’t unique to either the band or the teenage experience.  We all have song bound to specific times in our lives, and it just seems that the Replacements wrote many songs that lend themselves to this hyper-sensitive period in our lives.  I spent too long tonight trying to track down the source (even stumbling on another instance where I paraphrased it), and I’m fairly sure it’s in my missing copy of Our Band Could Be Your Life, but the best description I’ve ever heard of The Replacements was that Paul Westerberg wrote vividly about the teenage experience from the safety of the “other side” of adolescence.  Appropriately enough, it’s something that I appreciate more as I get further away from my teenage years.  It reminds me of the predicament Holden Caulfield thrusts himself on at the end of The Catcher in the Rye.  Impetuous Holden tells his sister that he wants to be the one who wants to protect kids from getting hurt or going down the wrong path.  He doesn’t realize that it’s a foolish pursuit; first, it’s near impossible, and moreover kids need to learn how to fall and recover.  Yes, there are certain mistakes kids can and should avoid, but some struggles, such as heartbreak, rejection, or frustration, are necessary.  Learning to grow up is to learn to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and continue on, and without the opportunity to fall (in relative safety), it’s impossible to learn how to get back up. To paraphrase Westerberg’s narrator in this song, they need to learn how to use their lives rather than merely hold onto them indefinitely.

The point is that no matter how much we want to intervene, there are some mistakes, injuries, and failures that we all must experience, and the only reason we feel qualified to guide others is that we have the benefit of hindsight and experience.  This is what makes Westerberg’s perspective work – he strikes the right balance between experience and authenticity, knowing where to nudge the listener and where to just lay out all his cards and let the listener take stock of the situation.  His songs aren’t judgmental or didactic as much as they are reflective.  We can see ourselves in the bored, frustrated, alienated, and hopeful personalities that populate Replacements’ songs, and perhaps with Westerberg’s mirror we can take better stock of ourselves and where we fit in to the big picture.  Rather than offering advice quickly tuned out, Replacements songs like “Hold My Life” wait passively for the next person to come along and find whatever he or she needs – empathy, understanding, catharsis, validation, or whatever – ready to help on the listener’s terms.  Mark Richardson, in a review of the Replacements’ reissues, put it well by saying that records, particularly the ‘Mats records, are always waiting.  “People change, but records don’t, and that’s part of what makes them great. They’re frozen in place, ready to be found by people who need them.”

More on The Replacements: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Bittersweet” – Hoodoo Gurus
(Words/music: Dave Faulkner, available on Mars Needs Guitars!, Elektra 1985)

Back in 2003, I attended the CMJ Music Marathon, the annual “college radio convention” in New York City that’s basically an excuse to see bands and drink free beers.  One of the few panels that I went to (most were either topics I wasn’t interested in or were far too early) was a panel discussion on music in video games.  At the time, video game music was somewhere between the 8-bit soundtracks embedded in my memory (I probably know the map music from Legend of Zelda better than any song I’ve heard more recently) and the Guitar Hero / Rock Band phenomenon of gaming as musical participation.  Some games – EA Sports games and Grand Theft Auto 3, off the top of my head – started using pop/rock songs in their soundtracks at the time, and game developers, marketers, and A&R people told the small crowd how video games were going to become as important as radio or music videos.  I mildly laughed at the idea then, but in retrospect only laugh at my skepticism now.

Thinking about it a little bit, video games are great vehicles for marketing music for a couple reasons.  First, video games create a captive audience that keeps returning.  We’re programmed to shift stations in the car or flip channels during commercials, but when playing a video game we’re sitting down in front of the TV (save for a bathroom break) for long periods of time.  Even though the soundtracks are swelling with each new game, there’s still a good degree of repeated songs with each repeated play.  Without realizing it, these songs are embedded in our consciousness.  This is where the second part of my theory comes in – when we hear these songs outside of the game, we start thinking about the video game again.  So if you hear a song from the newest edition of Madden football or GTA or Rock Band, it makes you think about the game (which, more often than not, is a pleasant thought).  Then, the positive opinion of the video game transfers to the out-of-context song; it has the power to turn good songs into something great, mediocre songs into something good, and even bad songs into tolerable to slightly favorable ones.

I don’t play a lot of video games anymore, but back around this time I was obsessed with EA’s MVP Baseball 2004 (The one with Albert Pujols on the front of it).  The songs in the game were heavy on early 2000’s alternative rock.  The “biggest” song in the game was the Von Bondies’ “C’mon, C’mon” and otherwise there were smaller, lesser known bands (Stellastar and Snow Patrol among others, with the latter finding success in the ensuing years).  One song, “Bittersweet,” was out of place simply by being the oldest song in the game and one of the few that wasn’t a bland modern punk song.  As I kept leading my New York Mets towards the World Series, “Bittersweet” (an appropriate description of being a Mets fan, by the way) was a welcome rest from the angrier songs in the game.  It’s a fine piece of mid-80s pop rock – some nice background vocals in the pre-chorus, just enough guitar to keep it interesting, and a simple melody that’s pleasant but not annoyingly catchy.  It wasn’t a song that I liked enough to find the album right away, but one that I’d nod along to (and sing along to the “don’t cry-e-ay” part) while adjusting my rosters.  At best, it sounds like something from the last Replacements album – a nice enough song, but nothing worth getting worked up over.

So a few years later, while watching VH-1 Classic late at night, I saw the horrendously dated video.  I was doing work on my couch, so my head was turned away from the screen until I realized that I was singing along.  I looked up and watched the rest of the video just to refresh my memory – I knew the song, and I knew it was from MVP Baseball, but I couldn’t remember the name of the song.  The marketing worked, but only half way – I thought fondly on the Hoodoo Gurus (who have a handful of equally pleasant singles that I have on a couple compilations), but that night I longed for those afternoons spent desperately trying to throw a no-hitter rather than a burning passion to buy their album.

That’s not to say I don’t like the song - it’s deceptively catchy and has a strong arrangement. Faulkner’s voice is uniquely gruff in a way that really just well with those backing vocals I love to sing.  Everything falls into place well - the way the chords change every measure, the way the acoustic guitar cuts right to the front of the arrangement.  But to be perfectly honest, I think the reason I like it (and ultimately hunted it down) was that I had heard it probably a hundred times while playing video games (also, having mostly mediocre songs surrounding it drove its stock higher).

More on Hoodoo Gurus: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm