A Playlist Series

American Crisis Playlist #34

Notes from Caucasia

More rumblings from the dead of winter. The impeachment/conviction trial will now hear from some witnesses who will tell us what we should already know. What so many of us have known. Our former president fomented, incited, a coup, and he did so not because he had a sinister plan in mind, but because he enjoys chaos, enjoys watching people do his bidding. Enjoys the world on his tiny string.

Last night, in preparations for Valentine’s day, my wife and I watched the 1956 Don Siegel version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It’s a creepy film sometimes, though wasn’t so when I first encountered it back in the 1980’s. Then, it seemed like just another odd, black and white monster film from a decade when the monsters were often teenagers who transformed before our eyes into werewolves or zombies. I laughed while watching the odd gender circumstances and sly sexual innuendos. I noticed the rather open ending, a device that stifles mainstream audiences and Hollywood itself, but refreshes the rest of us with the nods and winks of a world where anything is possible and the “good guys” whoever they might be, don’t always win.

Someone is always the good guy, and if you peak back over your own life journey, you might discover that the badges or licenses or formulas for determining good from bad have changed.

So as we all know, “the Body Snatchers” were really commies, not planetary others. They looked like us; spoke like us; drove cars and ate like us. They were all incredibly white, too, and so the “us” in question had to make us wonder about whom to trust, what side to take. The commies could be anyone in the 1950’s until that decade changed, and suddenly, or so we were led to believe, the commies started darkening and turning into the Civil Rights champions.

So as I think of the film now, I think of how Russia has interfered in our elections and we didn’t believe it or take it seriously. I think of how we term them our “adversary” now, but not adversarial enough to condemn DJT’s love affair with them; not that I want us to relive the Cold War, but I find the semantics so strange, unnerving. Like someone has taken over someone else’s body, mind, and soul.

As I watch the Republicans on the Senate floor doing their best jive and shuffle to convince somebody that this trial is unconstitutional, I wonder what soundtrack they’re listening to. What words and what music?

In the film, we never quite learn who has administered the pods in the first place: which planet they’re from, and what they plan to do when they take us over. So, I ask now, who’s calling the Republican shots and for what? Have they not seen what I’ve seen, heard what I’ve heard?

Is making America so very white again worth it? Is the great Q conspiracy actually solving anyone’s problems? Helping us through Covid? healing our racial divide?

I’m also rereading Danzy Senna’s first novel, Caucasia, and I remain stunned at how good it is, how well it captures that in-between world of racial identity that many of us live in and that many others of us have never seen, much less believed. It’s funny and sad what we say, what we talk about, what we call each other when we think no one else is listening.

These are moments of crisis that so often go unheard, or unremarked if heard. No wonder a former president can equate Nazis with anti-fascists and get away with it. And wink at us while he’s speaking.

And so, on to the soundtrack for this week.

AMERICAN CRISIS PLAYLIST #34

1. “I’m Ready,” The Black Pumas from 2020’s Black Pumas Deluxe. A funky beginning to this week’s list — a song about needing love in the city, reminding me lyrically of an old Turtles’ song from 1969, “Love in the City.” I’m loving everything I hear from the Pumas, especially that lead guitar that chops me in half. I knew nothing of this band until about a month ago, and now I’d follow them anywhere, city or country.
2. “Car Jamming,” The Clash from Combat Rock ( 1982). Whenever I feel frustrated, I find myself getting soothed by The Clash. “Car Jamming” gets lost in this album’s more mainstream sounds, but the rocky rhythms and Strummer’s lonely, plaintive singing bring me back to the first moments I heard this, lolling about my local record store, wondering how to disentangle myself from someone I didn’t like as much as I once thought I did. Car jam indeed. The place was called The Last Record Store. Where are you now Mike Procter?
3. “Hollywood Boulevard,” Big Audio Dynamite fro No.10, Upping Street (1986). Another record I don’t listen to as much as I should. The star-studded sidewalks of the glittering world keep us from noticing all that lies behind the scenes, just as in the film I watched last night. Doctors were the gods of this film world, and while reverence doesn’t wear so well, I keep thinking of how we weren’t paying enough attention to those who researched the science of disease. Maybe we never do. Someone reminded me that Rand Paul is a doctor. Uh huh.
4. “Pledging My Love,” Johnny Ace, from the 1973 Memorial Album. I felt the need to throw in a gushy romantic Valentine’s song. Okay, maybe I’ll add a few more. I swear I’m not pissed off all the time; it just gets hard when you know someone is a lying thug and can’t do anything about it. And then there’s my wife, sweating over repainting our kitchen cabinets while I type away in endless distraction. I got her a really expensive box of chocolate truffles and am cooking some crab bisque for us tonight. No more alien movies either.
5. “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted?” Jimmy Ruffin from 1967’s Jimmy Ruffin Sings Top Ten. I remember a Valentine’s episode of TV’s “The Wonder Years” where adolescent Kevin Arnold walks along the sidewalks of his neighborhood while his crush or love or whatever she was, “Winnie Cooper,” walks along on the opposite side of the street. This song accompanies their journey, and even though I didn’t know how their love or the series would end, I understood everything from this song. It still makes me wonder about teenage love and how real and devastating it is.
6. “For the First Time,” Best Coast, from 2020’s Always Tomorrow. “I’m trying even harder than I ever did before…on Friday nights I don’t spend too much time lying on the bathroom floor as I used to. The demons inside of me must have finally been set free.” I have a feeling I’ll be listening to this song long after we’ve all said good night. I feel about this band like I do about my noon cup of coffee: how would I get through the rest of the day without them/it? Sometimes “I do feel like myself again, but for the first time.” Another homage to love.
7. “Extraordinary Life,” Gordi, as found on Our Two Skins (2020). Do you ever feel like this — how extraordinary life is? And I don’t understand how we’ve managed to lose sight of how it isn’t and can’t be for so many. I have it so good, and I try to give back, but it’s never enough. Gordi’s voice should calm us down, so maybe at the next Q club meeting, they could fire up a joint and give this a listen, and really just calm the fuck down about your crazy shit and help us all out because no one is plotting against you. At least not yet.
8. “My Pledge of Love,” The Joe Jeffrey Group from 1969, but found on 2010’s Super Hits Scepter/Wand Pop, Vol 1. I remember afternoons of riding in my mother’s car as she did her errands at the grocery store, or even more exciting, at K-Mart. I had just discovered AM radio, or at least had discovered that she’d let me listen to it in the car as much as I wanted. This song would hit the waves, and I had no idea who Joe Jeffrey was or where he came from. And then I saw the 45 at K-Mart and knew slightly more.
9. “Breaker,” Deerhunter from 2015’s Fading Frontier. When my late friend Owen recommended Deerhunter, I had to listen. He so rarely steered me wrong, after all. I don’t know if this song ever hit him as hard as it does me. If you check the count of how many times I’ve turned to it on my Apple chart, you’d think I keep it on repeat play. Well, even if I did, I’d stand behind it and ask, so what song do you repeat until you know every note and chord? “Jack-knife on the side street crossing. I’m still alive and that’s something. And when I die, there’ll be nothing to say except I tried not to waste another day trying to stem the tide.”
10. “All About You,” (featuring Foster the People), The Knocks from a brand new single. Just found this song a few hours ago, and I want it to be my soundtrack, please. It reminds me of Saturday afternoons in the raw sunshine of winter, the afternoon waning, and maybe there’s still time to head outdoors to some park where love is always flourishing. See you there.

Have you noticed that the Riff is growing? More followers and more writers all the time. So hey there, Graeme A Henderson, Frank Mastropolo, Sarah Paris, Aoife Chaney, AJ Wiseman, Kathy Gerstorff! And old timers, Jessica Lee McMillan, Kevin Alexander, Steven Hale, Rob Janicke, If Ever You’re Listening, MDSHall, and my pal Kathryn Dillon. And Noah Levy, your voice and humor sustain us all.

Last week’s compilation here: https://readmedium.com/american-crisis-playlist-33-858f15e3b085?sk=b56ea97dd703183ea31d876981d1532b