Who Will Save Your Soul?

11/30/2005

Not to sound like a mindless shill who dances a jig every time The Man puts a quarter in the slot, but I have to admit that the I-Pod, brought to us by Steve Jobs and his jolly crew of corporate goons, is one of the greatest pieces of media technology ever created.

For all of you who never saw one of these things, the I-Pod is a 4"x 2"x 1/2" device with a 20 GB memory capacity that primarily plays music. All you do is hook this thing up to your computer, load a CD and copy it to the I-Pod. That translates to about 5,000 songs at your fingertips. You could listen for hours without hearing the same song twice.

Needless to say this is a commuter’s best friend. My trip to and from work, either through the urine soaked tunnels or the absurdly congested streets of Manhattan and the Bronx is, usually, at least one hour. I am not exaggerating when I say that I am a much happier and healthier person in general because I am listening to the introspective musings of Lennon, Dylan or Reed instead of the sounds of garbled, mundane bickering, bellyaching and whining that commonly fills the air of the typical rush hour platforms, subway cars and buses of the MTA.

The sheer power that this device gives an individual is remarkable and, for me, somewhat incomprehensible. Hell, I remember a day in High School when I was so proud and thrilled that my new Walkman could actually play cassette tapes! But if it was only that I wouldn’t be writing this. There is something that is intangible that makes the Pod such a keeper.

One of its unique features is the one that Apple calls "the shuffle." In a nut shell, after you load up as much music as you want which, if you remember, can possibly be your whole CD collection, you can push the shuffle icon which will start playing songs in a completely random order. In effect, you have no idea what the next song is going to be but you are guaranteed that you are going to like it because you chose the "data base" yourself.

Believe me, that is totally cool.

You can even categorize your material so you can shuffle the music by "artist" or "album." For example, if you are in a Beatles mood push the Beatles icon and you are hearing nothing but Fab Four songs in no particular order. "She Loves You" followed by "Piggies" followed by "You Know My Name" followed by... You get the picture.

I normally just push the general shuffle button and listen to whatever plays from the roughly 600 songs I have loaded from my own collection. (I have a decent variety – from The Velvet Underground to Public Enemy to Tom Jones) The results of this mixing and matching of styles and eras can be interesting, jarring or sometimes even annoying. But once in awhile, if you are extremely lucky, one song leads to another which, for whatever reason, leads you to a profound insight.

A moment like that occurred this morning.

As I sat on the revolting number one train, barreling through the bowels of Washington Heights, an up-tempo Lou Reed song "New Sensations" was playing. It was from the live album "Perfect Night in London" which was recorded in the mid- nineties. It was a mostly acoustic set so it has a nice spontaneous flavor to it. The song plays in the classic Reed style of telling a story in very literal lyrics which creates a larger, much more general, overall image or mood. In this case, the story is one of dissatisfaction and freedom of the human spirit. His raspy, limited but still strong, baritone adds to the poignancy.

It is certainly a high quality track:

Click here to listen to “New Sensations”

As Lou raps up his performance with a furious guttural ad-lib (Another Reed trademark) “CRACK IT OPEN...CRACK THAT MOTHER FUCKER OPEN!!!) I was thoroughly satisfied. First of all it was a good cut. But more importantly, it gave my mind something to focus on besides all the crotches that were being shoved in my face as the sardine-can I was riding in started to fill up beyond reason.

Now here is where the shuffle comes in. The very next track that comes on is "I'm Sensitive" from Jewel's first album "Pieces of You".

Yes THAT Jewel

Now before you get your bloomers all knotted up in your nether-regions, I refuse to apologize for having this album on my I-Pod. I actually don't own it. One day at work, a friend of mine saw me weeping uncontrollably in my cube, completely inconsolable, because I had just found out that Cherkazoo And Other Stories (Digitally Remastered) was currently available at Amazon.com while I am still listening to the official 1990 "Late 19th Century Victrolla- Transfer" version of “Yer Blues.” I mean, c’mon, really. After learning about this situation, you must ask yourself, Do we honestly have the right to call ourselves civilized?


So, she went back to her desk to retrieve the Jewel CD. Upon her return she found me with my head slumped over a mess of tear soaked paperwork, crying out to the heavens, WHY? WHY? WHY? After she finally forced me to recognize that she had been standing outside my cube for 17 minutes, she lent me the disc because she was sure it would cheer me up. I thanked her for her concern but assured her that nothing was going to make me forget that at that very moment we were speaking, someone, somewhere, was purchasing Deep Purple Powerhouse (DIGITALLY REMASTERED) as I listened to “And Your Bird Can Sing” which has a sound quality that can only be described as “fecal-matterish.” She told me to try it. Afterall, what did I have to lose?

She was right.

By the time the fourth or fifth track of Jewel’s very affected vocals, singing of "PJs" "Faggots" and "Why were you so mean to me, Daddy?" my mouth was firmly agape, completely astonished at what I was hearing. I didn’t know very much about her and I vaguely remember her popular hits from back then (“You Were Meant For Me” “Who Will Save Your Soul?”) and I certainly never listened to it in its entirety, but I do remember she was in the vanguard of a whole crop of female singer/songwriters who were the bridge between Grunge (Nirvana/Pearl Jam) and teeny-bopper-whore-pop. (Britney Spears/Christina Aguilera) Sarah McGloughlin, Natalie Merchant and Joan Osborne are names that pop up off the top my head as having these introspective folk songs that usually had the interesting position of rejecting materialism while being totally self-absorbed. But that is just a surface view of a whole scene that easily deserves a whole essay of its own.

(Full Disclosure: At the time these singers were popular 1995-1999(?) I really didn't give a damn about contemporary pop music and, admittedly, was probably out of touch, so my opinion is probably even more skewed than it normally would be.)

But after listening to this album now I can and will say that I think it is spectacularly bad...and I recommend that you give it a try too.

Because remember, the opposite of love is not hate...but indifference.

But let me get back to my epiphany because (A) I do not want to do a full "review" of the whole album, which it definitely warrants, and (B) I think she is actually a very talented performer and I do not want to sound like I am just completely bashing her. With that being said, her work feels like it is missing something.

As I mentioned before, the song that came on directly after "New Sensations" was "I'm Sensitive." Believe it or not, the two tracks had several similar components, which, I believe, invites comparison.

Click here to listen to “I’m Sensitive”

For example, compare these two verses:

From Jewel

I was thinking
That I might fly today
Just to disprove
All the things you say
It doesn't take a talent to be mean
Your words can crush things that are unseen
So please be careful with me
I'm sensitive
And I'd like to stay that way.

From Lou Reed

I want the benefit of a timeless muse
I want to get rid of all my negative views
And get rid of all those people
Who are always such a down

It’s easy enough to say what’s wrong
That’s not what I want to hear all night long
Some people are like a human Toulinol

New sensation...
I want a new sensation

They are both saying pretty much the same thing. Whomever they are talking to is obviously a negative influence in their lives and they want to change that. But listen to the difference in tone. The first verse is dealing from weakness, sounding somewhat pathetic while Reed’s declaration has strength, “demanding” not “asking” for a change in the status quo.

And what about these two stanzas?

Jewel

You always tell me
That it is impossible
To be respected
And be a girl
Why's it gotta be so complicated?
Why you gotta tell me if I'm hated?
So please be careful with me
I'm sensitive
And I'd like to stay that way.

Lou

I don’t like guilt, be it stoned or stupid
Drunk and disorderly, I ain’t no cupid
Two years ago today I was arrested on Christmas Eve

I want to walk, baby, not be carried
I don’t want to give it up
Maybe I’m not meant to be married
You know I’m no dog you tie up and put in a parked car

New sensation...
I want a new sensation

Do you see what I mean? It is almost as if they are two lovers talking with each other. They both want and feel the same thing, but are expressing it from opposite sides of the spectrum.

I think this explains the election of George W Bush.

I remember one time in the 1990s watching a VH1 “Behind the Music” about Grand Funk Railroad. For those of you who never even heard of this power trio from Flint, Michigan, believe it or not, at one time they were a HUGE rock group who sold millions of records. In fact, they were the second rock act to sell out Shea Stadium (I believe that was 1970) in a shorter amount of time than the Beatles took five years earlier. But they are pretty much forgotten and I certainly did not know much about them so that hour long show on VH1 was very interesting to me.

There was one scene that stuck out to me. It was a film clip from one of their concerts playing their most famous song “We’re an American Band.” It was just a basic stage shot with a guitarist playing those famous hard chords and the drummer pounding a thunderous steady beat. I think even the bassist was pulling a mouth open, over emphasized plucking pose.

What struck me about this pretty standard clip was the attitude. The guitar player had no shirt on, hair down to his ass and ultra tight pants which left nothing to the imagination. On each downstroke he posed with his legs apart, slightly bent, a serious facial and head jerking back and forth causing his long blonde mane to whip up and down. The drummer had an outrageous afro and pork chop sideburns, sweating profusely, pounding out such enlightened lyrics as “Four young chiquitas in Omaha,” and “We proceeded to tear that hotel down.” This was the epitome of pure unadulterated masculine strength and aggression.

It was refreshing.

The first thing I thought, after viewing that spectacle, was that at one time people thought this was cool. I thought of the music that were popular around the time I was viewing the show and the first one that came to mind was an extremely popular song by the Counting Crows called “Mr. Jones.” I liked the song myself but listen to the lyrics. It is an ode to indecisiveness.

All the other artists I mentioned earlier have that same quality to them. This music represents the shift that our society took in the 1990s, probably due to the economic high we were on. People became complacent and assumed that the gains made in civil rights, personal freedom and social dignity were set in stone and irreversible. So it was no longer necessary to show resolve and spiral into unreasonable self pity or, worse, self absorbed arrogance.

With several years of completely wishy-washy type thought, art and attitude, is it any wonder that people would vote for a mythic cowboy? Isn’t it more appealing to follow somebody who knows he is right, projects a certain confidence and a ridiculously simplistic view of the world rather than somebody who seems to not even know who they are?

Even if you know that it is wrong?

Back to the future.

In other words, I can not picture Don Brewer ever singing, “Believe in me…because I don’t believe in anything.”








Equivocation is probably the true nature of the world.
Just watch your back.
Larry