A Music Playlist series
American Crisis Playlist #22
Clarity and Chaos
I write on Friday morning just as Pennsylvania has tipped over into the Biden camp. When that tipping point happened, I said to my wife,
“Look, Pennsylvania has gone blue! This is it.”
And she said,
“But look how divided the country is!”
I don’t know at what tipping point in our marriage I became the optimist, but there you go.
“It’s all about fear,” she laughed when I suggested that whenever our dynamic had played over these last forty-eight hours, she brought up the divide after I raved with positive news.
Of course, we’re both right. My therapist has warned me not to get too hopeful about the state of our national state, for challenges, lawsuits, and chaos still cloud our horizon.
Not to mention the tantrum-thrower-in-chief.
I am not wise enough to explain, much less fully understand, why anyone, or so many people sadly, take this guy seriously, this orange plague. I know that Race/Caste play a great role, as they always have in our republic. As one-hit wonder band, Ace, once said, “How long has this been going on?”
Much more pertinent, how long will this be going on?
Maybe some of us can have the conversation about why we fear each other, whether that’s red or blue, white or black. Maybe.
I’ve been wrestling with which songs to add this week to the ever growing crisis playlists I’ve been compiling over 22 weeks now. I can’t begin to match themes to songs in a coherent way this morning, and so let me just put together some old favorites that might soothe some fears, or rev up some latent desires. Desires to love and dance and play everything loud, in hopes that we can pop some champagne later and at least celebrate ridding ourselves of the occupant in the White House. And yes, I know he’s not going far away, but here’s hoping anyway.
AMERICAN CRISIS PLAYLIST #22 (Oh, and that dynamic just occurred again. I quoted Eugene Robinson who said that if we are getting rid of “this horrible person in the White House, it’s a great day for the country.” And my wife said, “Yes, but there’s still so much work to do.” True, but…)
- “Sunny Girlfriend,” The Monkees, from 1967’s The Monkees’ Headquarters. My good ol’ brother Mike was the Monkees fan in our household, and he had this record early on, when he was only seven years old. Michael Nesmith wrote and sang lead on this little ditty, letting us know then — though how could we really see? — that he was more than a guy in a toboggan hat who filled a role on a made-for-TV pop band. The song is buried on the album, but here it is now, dedicated to my sunny girlfriend/wife!
- “Take the L (Out of Lover),” The Motels, from All For One (1982). I am not ashamed to say that I LOVE pop songs like this one. Maybe it was the video back then, in heavy rotation on MTV, that caught me, or maybe it was simply the power of the chorus, crescendoing relentlessly and speaking in its punny way to heartache and loss and what we all experience at some point in our young/old lover lives. Where I used to hang out in those days, that’s gone, too, as are the former lovers who hosted us all.
- “Mississippi,” John Phillips, a single which you may find on Creeque Alley — The History of The Mamas and the Papas, 1991. The song came from the red/blue 70’s, pre-Watergate. I feel like I included it on some earlier list, but so what? It always feels good to hear it, despite what Mississippi or John Phillips have proved to be. I think my Dad even liked it, and that was a feat I hardly thought possible. “Down on the bayou while you never know what you’re doing.” Or anywhere else.
- “I Believe in You,” Neil Young, After the Gold Rush, 1970. It’s a close call, maybe closer than the vote count in Georgia, but I’ll say that this was the one song that pushed me over into the Neil Young is my favorite rock artist camp. A slow, dirge-like ballad (what a redundancy that phrase is), it spoke to the same sort of woebegone heartache I mentioned in The Motels’ tune above. But how different. Neil and the Motels, Conservatives and liberals. We all win and lose and believe in what we think is best. “Finding that what you once thought was real, is gone, and changin’…am I lying to you when I say that….”
- “Photograph,” Ringo Starr, from 1973’s Ringo. So this is the last semi-happy song this week. Happy in the sense that we can love and remember loving even if we’re hurting now. “Every time I see your face it reminds me of the places we used to go.” Hard to think of another line that so nostalgically reminds us of how it feels to remember the past when things seemed better. What is our picture of America? What do we see? What will we remember? This entire record is pretty strong, if you want to play and think about how Ringo was always the peacemaker.
- “Conversation 16,” The National, from 2010’s High Violet. I might be some kind of sicko, but this song still grips me. I wrote an essay a few years back using its lyrics to frame a story I knew about a former girlfriend who had been raped. I knew her rapist, too, and when I dated this girl, she was still in shock from her rape, though I had no idea then exactly what had happened to her. The full story would take me another forty years to discover, in a private Facebook conversation we had. Of course, she’s lived with the story all along. She never revealed the guy’s name to anyone but a very few of us. And yes, he’s EVIL.
- “Psychopath,” St. Vincent from 2014’s St. Vincent. Way down the track-list on her record, this song rewards something — patience, endurance, revenge? “What can we do now,” said the beggar to the thief? He is what he’s always been, and why it’s so difficult for so many not to see the truth is beyond me. If I win, everything is cool, If I lose, it’s all fraud. I hate to besmirch the good name of “Charles Foster Kane,” but here is no “fraud at polls.” The fraud has occupied the oval office for the last four years.
- “Another Brick in the Wall/The Happiest Days of Our Lives/ Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2,” Pink Floyd, The Wall (1979). You gotta hear them all and not cherry pick what you want. Like votes in certain states. So the OP did build a wall all right — right in the middle of America. Hallie Jackson is reporting at this moment that “No one in the White House wants to be the one to reveal to King Lear that the party’s over.” And Dandy Don died a while back, and so did Cosell. Who’s left? James Baker says all votes count, too. “We don’t need no education….” Well????
- “Psycho Killer,” The Talking Heads, from The Best of…(1977). Man, did you see NBC’s Jacob Soboroff following that former DNI official in Las Vegas, asking about why he thinks there’s fraud and if there is fraud, exactly where is it? And the mobs trying to get into the voting centers in Vegas and Philly? It’s gonna get scarier, too, and that’s not my wife talking. Better run run run run, run away……
- “Ring of Fire,” Johnny Cash, found everywhere but certainly on 1969’s Live at San Quentin. Fiery rings, down down down, wild desire. The flames should grow higher, and if they’re feeling the heat in the Pennsylvania Avenue fortress, then they have some choices. Keep on descending; pour more oil on; or maybe, maybe, douse the fire with water or CO2. Life is about choices, and while there is division, one choice is becoming increasingly clear. We’ll have a new president in January. What else we’ll have is entirely up to us.
My dog was so excited last night that he pulled a leg muscle. He’s like me: in need of comforting. But I can provide comfort, too, and so let’s play, Noah Levy, Jessica Lee McMillan, Tre L. Loadholt, Kathryn Dillon! Thanks to the ongoing Riff, and to anyone reading. Here’s more:
