Howdy Campers! I just started another blog at my Friendster account. I'm not sure why... At this very second, I'm digging the sounds of Carla Thomas "B-A-B-Y." Let's just say that it's better than pizza.

one day this will be a podcast

This is the final presented version of "Exile in America" a paper which I presented at the Midwest Pop Culture Association Convention in St. Louis over this last weekend. It's OK, but hopefully something more will stem from it.

Always collaborating to achieve their goals, the need and eventual act of moving on alone has marked not only the most successful of American rock ‘n roll stars, but the most lasting. It’s this great desire to “head on out” that tells us the history of rock ‘n roll.

Legends aplenty have sprung up around this need to strike out on one’s own (Dylan’s electrified Newport Folk Fest, Springsteen jumping the fence at Graceland), but the records tell the stories. Whether it’s a personnel change, or just a change in lyrical content, the striking evidence of a need to create something new and lay down a new foundation with each record is apparent in the best of our American performers. With each Dylan record, there was something I n every groove that not only betrayed his last set of truths, but broke new ground for all of rock ‘n roll. Later on, in the seventies, Bruce Springsteen would show us that he could take everything we knew (or thought we knew) about rock ‘n roll and put it on one five-minute explosion of melting vinyl. In the nineties, when it seemed that grunge was going to be just another disappointing fad, Wilco came storming out of that wreckage to paint a completely new future with the words and melodies of it’s leader, Jeff Tweedy.

Americans need a maverick, someone to show us the way without knowing it. We want to be surprised, but only in a certain way. The performers that mark our Rock and Roll History are generally single figures, though backed by a solid cast of characters. Elvis, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, Little Richard (Who would kill me if he found out he wasn’t first), Jerry Lee Lewis, Tom Petty, The Coug, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan are all a part of that great tradition. It’s definitely not pointed out frequently that most of America’s great performers of all genres are also of a single nature, that they operate solo, but it’s an interesting fact that goes unnoticed far too often. The most lasting of our great American musical canon is made up of those incredible loners, Sinatra, Martin, Gershwin, Bernstein, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Duke, Miles, Dizzy, Coltrane, Bird, among many others, though the need to be alone seems to really come to a head with rock music. Why does it stand out? Not because it’s loud, or brash, but because it describes the innermost hopes and dreams (and nightmares), but no matter how much it describes our sad and lonely condition, Rock gives us the promise of a better one. While there can be a lot of talk about adolescence and “nothing to do” when one theorizes the inception of the form, the evidence betrays that theory. Rock has not only outlasted the teen years of those first few rock ‘n roll fans, but has gone on to define the formidable years many young people that came after.

But why Rock and Roll, why not any of the other genres? Rock is certainly the most bastardized of the American musics, taking on just about any form that it wants to, but again, it is the form with the most promise. Although it does not deliver on the togetherness that Country, Soul, and even Jazz can, it speaks more toward the future than any other genre. Country at its best is a simple state of the union; Soul is a reassuring pat on the back, no matter how warming or confident; and Jazz is the Classical Music, the high art, the peak of creativity of America, offering nothing more than itself and the listener’s interpretation. Rock, on the other hand, is a declaration of independence, a kick in the ass, and offers everything, never pretending to be anything it’s not. Rock has lasted because it inspires the listener to make it last. While lonely, it’s a very interactive, very personal art form; to quote Pete Townsend, “All I need’s a mirror/and I’m a star.” Completely alone, yet totally involved.

While that declaration of independence is so important to rock music, the stuff that has lasted has had more of a revolutionary tone, as opposed to just a rebellious one. This is why rock is so lonely, and why its history has been carved out and laid down by single figures and not groups. All too often one finds themselves the prisoner of their own hopes or dreams, as the protagonist does in John Fogerty’s “Lodi,” (“I played my songs whil people sat there drunk”) or the son in Springsteen’s “Independence Day” (“I won’t let them do what I watched them do to you”). Yes, these are characters that seemed to have lost everything, but there is the hope and promise that something will come along to liberate them. The promise is never fulfilled at once, but more in the journey that follows.

It’s problematic to say who has taken that journey, and how that journey can be charted. Certainly, there are those performers that have hidden their own voices behind others, using their bandmates as a mirror through which we can see them. Tweedy has tweaked the line-up of Wilco several times during their ten-year career, using up collaborators until he’s ready for something new. In other cases, performers use their ever-changing personal perspectives to keep the listeners guessing, or at the very least, following them, leaving a legacy for the critics to sort out. Dylan has made his career by keeping us guessing. But most every American performer tries to sort themselves out in whatever way they see as possible, giving their listeners and fans alike a little bit of what they expect, a little of what they don’t, and a lot of themselves. The singular voices in American Rock music are always trying to discover themselves by looking to their listeners, and vice-versa. They are trying to be us and, beyond any pop-star fantasies, we are trying to be them. We identify with Dylan because although he puts words together in a way that we could only hope to someday understand, he does it on his own. Springsteen gives us the hope that we, too, will some day break out of the mold of our fathers and mothers and build something greater and more lasting. The thing that we like to do most is our own thing, and that could be anything. We want to stand out, and move against what everyone else is doing, but make it look like we don’t care. Jeff Tweedy gives us that chance with every new Wilco album, breaking the expectations of everyone, being the most successful when he isn’t even trying.

It’s one thing to say that a performer is trying to be us, or at the very least to relate to us, but it’s that search to give people what they want that makes American performers so unique (I think it also sets us up for a lot of failure later on, but who remembers The Grays?). We want be our own men and women, and as much as we identify with single figures, music is made at its best by groups. We do not have a history of practical socialism in our country, so we think we can do it by ourselves. We can’t.

The truth of the matter is that Americans want to, but simply cannot, stand completely alone. Certainly, the pulling apart makes for great music, but as is the case, single performers make strides on their own, and then find a group to follow the dream down. Dylan starts to hint at this with Bringing’ It All Back Home and follows through on Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. A recording like “It’s all over now, Baby Blue” aches for more instrumentation (although the recent Scorsese Documentary kind of proves this wrong), leading to tracks like “Desolation Row,” and even “I Want You.” Dylan’s true power comes from the fact that he roars every line as if he’s shouting through the din of a noisy bar, even in the most intimate of settings. Springsteen too, would follow this formula on his first record Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey certainly mimicking Dylan, but not realizing that that was the only way for an American to do it. Some of the most exciting records in the history of Rock music have this strange balance of sound empty, yet totally full-blown. Wilco’s 1996 sophomore release, Being There straddles the same fence. Songs that seem to come from one person yet don’t feel right without a full band.

The paradox is as was said before; the leaders must stay ahead, but not too far. They cannot stray from sight, but walk their own path. As Americans, we have always upheld the lonely and forgotten, because that is the very core of our being. We don’t have the great partnerships of old. We are Dylan, we are Springsteen, we are Jeff Tweedy. They are everything we want to be, they are exiled in America.

I’ve just finished my adventure at the MPCA in St Louis USA, and had quite the time There were a lot of fascinating idea exchanged, but unfortunately, I think that a lot of those theories are well-worn. Part of it is that I think that most of these small pop culture communities are so incestuous, and people tend to get fixated on the same-old same, trying to perfect their all-encompassing theories to accommodate anything that they might encounter. One of the more pointed and well researched papers was on Branson, Missouri, and how it’s both kind of crap-holes at once. The intensity of the presenter was pretty amazing. How she was able to tie in everything together into four groups. Anyway that’s not why I’m writing…

Presently, I have found myself on a train bound for Chicago, and it’s quite the American experience, the land unfolding, the passing homesteads and the sun setting over this former prairie is almost too much to take. Chesterfield, IL, I’ll look that up later…It’s started to get a tad chilly, but I can wait to put my jacket on for a while now.

I always wonder where and why people are traveling when I get the opportunity to travel alone. There’s a girl who was already on the train when I got on, tears in her eyes, with that distinctive, expectant grimace of a young kid who knows they have to leave, but wish there was a fantasy world where they didn’t have to, or even grow up. There’s a girl in front of me who is probably no more than 19, but takes herself real serious, like the calculus she’s got in front of her is the key to the safety of hers and everyone elses soul. I know that most of the folks in this car are headed to Chicago, but what does that really mean to them? Are any of them Northsiders such as myself, or will they travel to the bungalow belts spread out over the Northwest and South Sides? I suspect that most of these kids are headed back to drunken adventure, judging by the lack of life, or even fear, in their eyes. Some of us were not prepared to travel, finding only Doritos and stale hot dogs as a replacement to the meals we forgot to eat.

It’s so rare that I get to record my thoughts in this way, but after a delicious tuna sandwich, I feel more than able to do a decent recording job. I keep thinking that they should put the heat on in the cabin here, but who knows what the protocol is for such things. We passed through Carlinsville awhile back, and I suspect that the Red Hat Divas are waiting for us in good ole Springfield I-L! I can’t think that it will be too much trouble, but you never know, ‘cause them old broads be crafty.

Ah… Springfield, the last time I saw you, you were covered in snow, hardly worth looking at. Now I see you as you were meant, a beautiful, burned-out tribute to the middle America lost to the Wal-Marts and Mini-Malls. Is there such a thing as justice?

So here's some fun time from the world of E.C.

Spike is a much better record than I ever thought. I threw an old tape of it in a boom-box last night while I was doing the dishes and was overwhelmed by the off-beat beauty that lies on this watershed record.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that Spike is the great achievement of Elvis Costello’s career, or even one of the best but I do think it contains a great cross-section of his finest writing. It’s on this record were he finally puts the old Attractions formula to rest, lays out what would be his approach to working with Burt Bacharach eight years later, and more than anything, gave him the well-formed yet off-beat compositional album that he had been trying to achieve since Imperial Bedroom. I really think that Spike has been belatedly ignored as result of it’s timely sound, and it’s obtuse lyrics. Elvis is nearly always at his best when he’s living right inside your ear, as opposed to just behind the band. Spike isn’t quite as personal an album I think we come to expect from God’s Comic. There’s a lot to be said about these songs, but since I’m forced to go collect my laundry, this will have to do for now.

So just for tonight I decided to have some fun. I was thinking that it would be great to have a supergroup that would be led by Gary Louris of the Jayhawks and Nick Lowe of Nick Lowe. Nick could play bass, and Gary would be the lead guitarist. I must now figure out who would flesh out the rest of the group...

So we got Nick and Gary singing and playing their respective instruments, but who to get on drums?

Drums: Kent Coomer? Uriel Jones? I was actually thinking Georgia Hubley of Yo La Tengo, cause then you not only get a singing drummer, but you get a GIRL singing drummer.

Rythym Guitar: I she wasn't so huge, I'd say Chrissie Hynde, but Liz Phair is gone have to be my final choice.

Keyboards: You got to have a great keyboard player when you have a supergroup, that's just a fact, but who's it gonna be? Oh Yeah, no fucking question, Jay Mutherfucking Bennett...mutherfucker.

Wow, this is a really great band so far, and I havn't even chosen a horn section yet. I'm also not sure if the album should have guest artists, you know, friends of the band that play or sing on the best cuts. Nick Lowe could bring John Hiatt, who might play and write a song for the project, but not sing on it. Gary might run into Ryan Adams, convince him to play guitar, but ends up staying on as the uncredited sixth member. I'm also trying to figure out how to get the Memphis horns to show up, and maybe the funk brothers, but that's for another fantasy...

More from "Exile..." This plopped out, sort of the academic fighting the rock 'n roll fan.

Elvis Presley still does it for a lot of people. Go to Graceland and witness it for yourself. Yet there’s still something so lonely about him; his choice of tunes, his delivery. The fact that you can’t actually classify him makes him stand out. Some people might think that it’s because he was some kind genius, but it really seems more a happy accident than anything else. His was a lone voice in a sea of clamoring crabs-in-a-barrel, maybe for the throne of rock ‘n roll king, maybe to get your attention. Is it so hard to believe that he is the King?

This is from what will become "Exile In America," my little presentation at this years Midwest Pop Culture Confrence. Enjoy...and no crap about the spelling, I was absent from school that day.

Why are we so alone? Why is America full of such lonely hearts, broken dream, men alone, women forgotten; what makes us a country full of such determined, hard-working, yet very anti-social people?

There is a saying that a man should live in quiet desperation, and while I think this might actually be true, occasionally, man is not so quiet and starts to answer those questions.

There is not a better place than our very own rock ‘n roll to hear these voices of singularity, these men and women that want so desperately to be noticed, to be heard, to be recognized by others. It has been asked “What came first, the music or the Misery,” and my answer is very simple, neither, America came first.

Our best and worst are those lone voices; those voices that uplift, or disquiet a moment of peace, the voices of decent or approval, the misunderstood voices, and most of all the voices of love and hate. That thrilling pursuit of the great singular voice is actually just us trying to find our own voice. A heart broken teenager might find themselves soothed by an old Beatle classic, looking for that understanding that their friends can’t seem to hand over. How about the soon-to-be-divorced mother of three that has everything she could want except for a husband that understands her, maybe she’s going to take solace in the independent musings of Liz Phair, or the haunting beauty of Joni Mitchell.

We want our pop stars to be solo stars, and most of all we want them to be just like us, pulling themselves up by the boot straps, making good, and sticking it to those that kick ‘em along the way.

Elvis is still in all of us, as much as we don’t want to admit it. Everything that he did really hit. Bruce is still us. Dylan is everything we want to say, but can’t get it out. Smokey is there, and so is Marvin, Smokey ever the optimist, Marvin the lone wolf. Otis was there when you needed him, but never as much as when he left this world. Yeah, there Lennon and Townshend and Jagger and Richards, but we will always be their unbridled cousins that only wish they could understand. They will always understand the claustrophobia of life; we will always understand the loneliness of it. We still live in wide open spaces,

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: If Charlie Likes Led Zepplin Too, Who Wins The Bet?

Let’s start out with a little history; I discovered Wilco on a the second stage at the HORDE fest in 1995. They were by far the best thing all night, but did not become my pet band for another year. After the 1996 release of Wilco’s 2nd album, Being There, the Who were officially replaced. The punchline is that by the following May, I decided to go to see Wilco and the Jayhawks instead of my prom; certainly an excellent choice. With the release of Mermaid Avenue, I was convinced that these guys were the greatest band nobody’d heard of.

And Goddamnit! You fuckers proved me wrong!

So it turns out that Wilco was a good band, and on top of it, they started to get popular, and fuck if I didn’t know what to do. How the hell did this happen? I was supposed to be Wilco guy. I had the market on this band! Nobody was going to say that they liked this band more than me. Sure, Wilco could be as popular as they wanted to be in any other city- BUT NOT MINE!! There were all these sad, single, middle-aged people that felt stupid for not buying those Replacements tickets that time, so were making up for it by singing along with my favorite band. There were also all those self-important college guys that decided “it was time to get into Tom Waits.” What a bunch of horseshit.

Anyways, I was getting jaded (still am), and the rumors started to fly…

So time to turn over a new leaf. No longer will this be a forum for my belly-aching, but a place to find my mis-guided views in black and white. Since I just worked the 5am-9am shift, I'm going to pass out...but stay tuned for my first installment- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: The Broadway Adaptation.