A Great Show, An Inferiority Complex, An Incompetent Nutsack Editor, Pain as Art, Why I Will Continue to Write About Rock 'N Roll and Elizabeth Elmore

"Who's Caitlin Cary?"

"You need to explain to your readers that Wilco is a rootsy blend of pop, rock, and country”

"You remind me of a young me"

-incompetent nutsack editor to Kurt Hernon, Spring, 2002

“We left Philadelphia this morning with a real inferiority complex,” said a Pabst Blue Ribbon wielding Brett Tobias. Tobias, a guitarist and lead singer for the Bigger Lovers - one of the more intriguing and autonomous pop rock bands working these days - was smiling as he said this; his feelings of inadequacy were, at this point, gone - erased by another sharp live show in a strange city, on a strange stage, before total strangers. I swallowed some of my own beer and cracked a bit of a grin at the thought: inferior? These guys? After their record How I Learned to Stop Worrying took a walk around the edges of pure pop, surveyed it for a short while, and then left it for something far more interesting they felt inferior? Ha! I’d bet a month of beers that not too many folks in the room that evening would have called them inferior - not after the show they’d played - not by a long fucking shot.

Yet, I could totally dig Tobias’ vibe. You see, I was there too, that very night, insecure and teetering on the verge of chucking it all myself. I’d been bitching for weeks about what this writing thing that I do really amounts to in this world and was beginning to feel like maybe it (the writing, the doubt, the silence) was killing me.

I’d been trying to sort it all out for a few weeks by the time the Lovers rolled into town and had been leaning on everyone for some sort of reason to believe. I bitched to friends, to family, to acquaintances, and was even on the verge of laying my bitch on the Bigger Lover boys - but quickly shifted that idle thought after their gig laid down a few of those “reasons” for me for a few hours. Anyways, as Tobias said, they were feeling the same goddamn way earlier in the day and now that cloud seemed to have dissipated in the afterglow of the show. Here they were sitting pretty with beers in their hands and on their breath, and there I was, smiling, having a good time, but seriously on the verge of putting a bullet through my rockroll writing “career”. Everyone’s got his or her problems, ya know? And that night’s contentment didn’t need some despondent hack writer bringing gloom back around.

Anyways, this black cloud whiny funk of mine had gotten so bad that even my trusty old lady wouldn’t listen to me blubbering about being sick of it all anymore. “Just do something about it will ya?” she’d say. “Quit, don’t quit, whatever…just quit talking about it, okay?” To which I’d snap, “But I’m good at talking about it…that I’ve got down, it’s the writing thing I ain’t so sure of anymore.” At the very peak of this pathetic self-pity, the point where even I was sick of me and just before heading out for that fateful Bigger Lovers show, the neighbors dog, an elderly, dumb, and half blind critter who loves anyone who’ll so much as pat its head (which I had a fondness for doing), would get up and trot away from me when I would try telling it my troubles with the simple offer of a jerky snack (quite a surprising sight itself since nobody could remember the last time the old dog moved at a pace anything quicker than a lumbering wallow).
So there I was…trapped in this silly maze of self-doubt and wondering who really gave a shit what I had to say, suspicious that anything I wrote was worthwhile anyways, and skeptical of so much of this music I hear today that denies itself the right to be an extension of the people who are making it, not just the sounds of others being done in mimicry of sunken idols. I was firmly unconvinced of my place in the whole fucking rockroll mess that I figured it was time to get out - to just quit…just quit…just quit.

But, as things played out (as I am apt to allow them to do - my passive aggressive nature can be overwhelming at times) it seemed I wouldn’t have to quit after all - because the rockroll writing would quit me first.

An Elvis Costello record (a man who more than any other shaped my ears) that I liked very much came and went - and left me with nothing. As did a Paul Westerberg record (a man who shaped my mind as much as anyone else) that aimed at handing the faithful (I am one) exactly what they’d wanted from the man for years now - and again, nothing. I had nothing to say about either record really - I just listened and admired. Guess what? Nobody noticed. No one cared. Not even me…

Maybe the butterfly had set itself free. A metamorphosis so silent and complete that not even I’d known what I was going through. Silenced by freedom I’d figured - my addiction cured, my obsession set aside! I was okay with it too. I figured that I’d done some good along the way; written a few humorous things; made a few friends, and in some small way perhaps affected the way a few folks listened to the music they cared about - and that was more than enough for me. I’d had enough. You’ve probably had enough. So enough is enough. Or is it?

Probably not.

In my life it’s always music - always has been, and I fear, always will be. Whether I’m on top of the world or am way too far down, it's music that gives me equilibrium. The fact that music does mean so much to me is both curse and cure, but it’s always the thing that settles in and makes life’s weight bearable. I turn to it and lean hard on it and it never lets me down really. And in the end the music I love probably explains me better than I can explain possibly myself - so, that said, here goes:

I’m down again
And I don’t know how to tell you
But maybe this time I can’t come back
Because I might be too far down
I wish for real
That I could turn it on and off
Like hot and cold and up and down
Because I’m down again
I’m too far down
I couldn’t begin to smile
Because I can’t even laugh or cry
Because I just can’t do it
If it was so easy to be happy
Why am I so down?
All I can do is sit and wonder if it’s going to end
Or if I should just go away forever
When I sit and think
I wish that I just could die
Or let someone else be happy
By setting my own self free
And you don’t want the emotion
Because the taste it leaves is for real
But nothing’s ever real until it’s gone
And I might be too far down
And is this just another thrown away
Or is this the end of the whole stupid road
But you wouldn’t want to know how I feel anyway
Because the darkest hole is at the end of the road
I’m down again
And I guess I’m not the only one who dreams
That there’s not any way to tell you
Because I might be too far down

(“Too Far Down” words by Bob Mould - sentiment entirely shared, lyrics from memory so forgive any errors)

It’s a grim tune on paper to be sure - but as the centerpiece of Husker Du’s (now there is a band I owe so goddamn much to and just flat out love) just-before-the-break-up and breakdown record Candy Apple Grey, Mould paints it up as a cocoon; a bleak casement that might someday be escaped if only you can punch through the pain and leave yourself that chance. It’s the high blues as true as they ring; a melancholy that knows the liberation that might lie in wait for those who are willing to endure the darkness.

Do not get me wrong, I’m not feeling the sort of despair that rains in “Too Far Gone’s” deepest valley’s, nor am I looking for some sort of casual pat on the head - that lame-ass “I’m okay, you’re okay” validation ain’t my bag. I don’t need any of that, I just need another great record to come along and maybe a beer and probably some rest.

The Final Solution: or, how it came to be that I survived my silly malaise and came back with a vengeance.

An editor I had the disgrace of working under at an “alternative” weekly spent two hours of his “precious” fucking time rewriting a review I did of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and somehow found the time to e-mail me his “revisions”. I looked it over, chuckled, and sent a note back saying that it looked okay, but that he’d better not dare put my name on it (his most offensive suggestion being that the piece needed to explain Wilco as a “rootsy blend of pop, rock, and country” You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me pal!) Well, it seems that my stance incensed the poor fellow because the next thing I knew the phone was ringing and it was said professorial editor ranting and raving and slobbering all over the place about all sorts of silly shit as though I cared and/or needed to hear any of it. There would be a hole in this week’s paper! As if I gave a shit - a hole would be much better than the shit he’d revised into my piece.

The conversation dragged on and led us through a little dance which ended with the fucker telling me that he actually thought that I “had potential” to be a “decent music critic” and that I’d reminded him of a “young” him and that he had a lot he could “teach” me about music writing and then he proceeded to provide his evidence in the way of fucking grammatical criticism. Like I give one shit about fucking grammar! This is rock and roll you motherfucker - you FEEL it. Your rules mean nothing to me. There are no rules in rockrol. Fuck man, if there were goddamn rules most of us wouldn’t want anything to do with the shit! Shove your grammar and your English major right back up you’re grammatical ass!
Look, I can take people not liking my stuff. I can handle the cries of self-indulgent (to which I say, so is the goddamn music!). I can gut out people labeling me “amateur”, or them turning up a nose to my lack of “class”. I can buy the moans from those people who think I’m a shyster or the ones who just wanna say that I simply suck. But when you give me some pedagogic nonsense about “potential” and my fucking grammar, well, I get just a little pissed off ok. Especially when the source is someone I see as an incompetent nutsack who knows nearly nothing about rock and roll (my evidence: In an e-mail earlier in the year I suggested that I review the new Caitlin Cary - “of Whiskeytown” I’d written in explanation - record to which this so-called “music” editor replied, “Who’s Whiskeytown? And who is Caitlin Cary?” I swear to God - true story.)

So, being perceived as a “young” him shook me so badly that I took all of my potential and decided that I didn’t need his fucking lessons - not now, not ever. I went my way and he went his. Two weeks later I got a phone call telling me that this guy had quit his post - in a near breakdown - before he was fired. Justice should always be so pure.

So there I was, surrounded by friends, beer flowing freely, and the Bigger Lovers having just aced a set in my hometown. Life was good. On the way home that night I shuffled blindly through some CD’s and plucked out a disc to toss into the car stereo. It just happened to be the Rolling Stones Some Girls. They are doubtless the biggest band in rock and roll history and the one that casts what is perhaps the longest shadow over it, but by the time I had Keith Richards wheezing out “Before They Make Me Run” I found myself smiling about that inferiority thing that Brett Tobias had brought up earlier that night. The Bigger Lovers pulled out of Philly that morning wondering many of the same things about their place in the current rock landscape that I’d been wrestling with for weeks beforehand, yet they put it all aside once they got to that stage and mixed up their own batch of rock and roll potion with all of the energy and passion of a band ten times bigger (but in no way better) for a decent-sized crowd of Clevelanders that didn’t know them from fucking Adam.
Now I knew why I had to keep going with this paltry thing I do in some fashion or another: I had to keep going, keep moving on for guys like Brett Tobias, Scott Jefferson, Pat Berkery, and Ed Hogarty - the guys in the Bigger Lovers. Because it isn’t often that bands and records come around that I feel a certain connection with - especially by “new” artists (part of my struggle to keep up with writing output is exactly that - a virtual dust bowl drought of the sort of music that gets me so geeked up that I have no choice but to write about it)

Hell, we’re all feeling inferior these days, and rightfully so. None of us is part of “their” plan - and mostly that is by choice. So when you stop for a moment and really look at the sad alternatives to your “inferior” world you’ll start to realize exactly what it is that you’re feeling inferior to - and, if you’re the wiser for it, you’ll probably find that you wind up laughing right on through your tears.

Addendum: Two days after finishing the ramble above the mailman brought me some salvation in a brown cardboard envelope. Elizabeth Elmore’s (that’s right, that girl from Sarge) new band The Reputation have a debut disc out and it’s something special. Nothing makes a rock junkie’s heart happier than a dose of hyper-smart guitar-centric pop that has the balls to wiggle around with trumpets, pianos, and eternal lyrics such as “’til I caught the tail end of her ass slipping up your stairs and when your light flicked on I knew you had that bitch in your bed”. But it’s Elizabeth Elmore’s voice that steals the show here - pissed, vengeful, sexy, and confident, but mostly just hurt…hurt…hurt. But she’s used to the pain by now and she draws every ounce of her strength from it. I’m in love - and alive - once more.

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