Conformity, Greatness, Mediocrity and George Bailey

In college I had a roommate who facetiously claimed that the Frank Capra Christmastime classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, had been commissioned by the U.S. Government as a way to dampen expectations of the post-war population. Soldiers returning from the war wanted not just a piece of the American Dream, they wanted to achieve, to aspire, to conquer life the way they had conquered death on the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific islands. In short, they wanted it all. The Feds, fearful of a potential uprising of unsatisfied citizens, hoped to quell their desire, and what better way to do so than to make a movie about a man with big dreams who by the film’s end learns life’s most valuable lesson: that no man is a failure who has friends? A wonderful theory, and one that made the twenty-something me laugh and take note, as I sure as hell wasn’t going to settle for the simple life. No fricking way.

Fast forward just a short decade or so, and I was an at-home dad taking care of twin daughters in a three-bedroom ranch in suburban Pennsylvania. So much for conquering the world, though there were days – say, on a sunny weekday when my kids and I successfully tackled a trip to the Philadelphia Zoo with no spousal lifeboat – that I did indeed feel like The King Of The World.

Government conspiracy or not, the idea of conformity did seem to take hold in post-war United States, so much so that author Richard Yates devoted his 1961 debut novel Revolutionary Road to the concept. In a 1972 interview, Yates says of his novel: “During the fifties there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs—a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price…”  He also says his book is about “…a series of abortions, of all kinds—an aborted play, several aborted careers, any number of aborted ambitions and aborted plans and aborted dreams.”

George Bailey, right?

Not so fast. 

As I was reading the book last month, I noticed that Yates’s protagonists, Frank and April Wheeler, were living out the second part of a life cycle that Kurt Vonnegut Jr. describes in his novel, Deadeye Dick:

“If a person survives an ordinary span of sixty years or more, there is every chance that his or her life as a shapely story has ended and all that remains to be experienced is epilogue. Life is not over, but the story is…I suppose that’s really what so many American women are complaining about these days: They find their lives short on story and overburdened with epilogue.”

Overburdened with epilogue.  The unhappiness of Yates’s characters really had nothing to do with marriage, suburbia, careers or lack thereof, hobbies, home projects or friends. The Wheelers were going to be miserable whatever their life circumstances. Their stories were over, and they were living out their epilogues. They experienced no joy from their children. They didn’t do interesting things on the weekends. They didn’t enjoy the company of others. They did nothing to help people. They were largely sleeping walking through life.

George Bailey lived a life that – while perhaps not the one he’d envisioned as a youth – was quite rich in comparison, though one could argue that this conclusion is the result of rationalizing. He didn’t achieve greatness, and therefore had no choice but to find solace in mediocrity. But are those the only alternatives?  Is the alternative to greatness – to achieving one’s dreams at any cost – mere mediocrity?  Is George Bailey anything special in the end? John Steinbeck might not think so. In his novel East of Eden, the character Sam Hamilton says, “When the Lord God did not call my name, I might have called His name – but I did not. There you have the difference between greatness and mediocrity. It’s not an uncommon disease…I’m glad I chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward might have come with the other?”

How, indeed. In the current movie, La La Land, the final segment offers a glimpse into alternative lives for the two leads had they chosen difference courses, and I suppose we all play out these parallel universes in our imaginations from time to time and wonder what would have been like had we taken a different turn, said yes instead of no or vice versa, or taken a risk we weren’t prepared to take. But does mean that the life we live – perhaps a rather common life – is mediocre? 

I argue that it might be, but it definitely needn’t be.

More on this point next week.

A Lost Song: State of Independence

It’s been a full two months since my last entry, so it’s high time to get back into the swing of things. As such, I’ll start with something light: a lost song that found its way back after two decades of being MIA.

Songs from long ago have a way of creeping back into conscious thought if I sit still and sit silently long enough. Enter the road trip. A perfect opportunity to turn off and tune in, as it were. Last month it was twelve hours to D.C. and twelve hours back, and while podcasts by Marc Maron and Terry Gross are my favorite way to kill time on the highway, I find that after three or four hours I need a respite. No music. No interviews. No dialogue with the family. Just silence. 

During these moments I find that can do a number of things. One, create. I’ve written many songs when I allow myself to just…be. Two, plan and worry. I go through lists of things I need to do, should have done, ought to do. Three, completely zone out. When I do this, the subconscious seeps through the little crevices of conscious thought, and all of the sudden I’m mentally singing a song I haven’t thought of in twenty-two years. 

Chrissie Hynde begins singing a phrase of unintelligible lyrics and then more forcefully sings the line:

“The state of independence shall be.”

I think, what the hell is that? I recall hearing it regularly on The Cities 97 in Minneapolis back in 1993, right around the time I started dating my future wife, and it sounded similar to another song from around that period: “Protection” from Massive Attack, which my subconscious happily resurrected a few years back. 

PV

Enter the Internet search. And this is where things get kind of interesting if you’re a music geek.

The song in the form I remember is by a duo called Moodswings, who in 1992 released their debut album featuring a song sung by Chrissie Hynde called “Spiritual High (State of Independence)”. I’ve since learned that this song is actually included on The Pretenders’ Greatest Hits album (which is kind of lame, if you ask me), but I knew nothing about this.

But the song’s origins go back to 1981, when former lead singer of Yes, Jon Anderson, teamed up with Vangelis (the same year that Vangelis’s Chariots of Fire theme became an unexpected and ubiquitous radio hit) to release their second album, The Friends of Mr. Cairo. I was familiar with the title track, as on a Sunday night in September of 1982 I listened to Jon Anderson’s solo concert on the King Biscuit Flower Hour on WQFM, Milwaukee. Hell, I still have the recording I made of the show on cassette! The show featured several tracks from his very solid album, Animation, a bunch of Yes songs, and the one tune from his collaboration with Vangelis.

I never purchased any Jon and Vangelis record, but on the aforementioned album is a tune called “State of Independence,” a lengthy piece that somehow got to the desk of Quincy Jones, who in 1982 produced a version of the song for Donna Summer’s eponymous album. And lo and behold, it was a modest hit in Europe. How the hell did Quincy Jones come upon a song by a couple of prog-rockers? No clue.

Full version of song from the 1981 Jon & Vangelis album "The Friends of Mr. Cairo."

Love This!! 1982.. :p

An open and empty mind can do amazing things, and I suspect a good portion of my latter years will be me sitting in a comfy chair and my mind playing a crazy shuffle of songs I lost track of long ago.

Or maybe I’ll just worry.  Could go either way.

Yes by Any Other Name

It’s gotta beat Steve Howe and four other guys calling themselves Yes.

On Saturday night in Chicago, former Yes-men Jon Anderson, Trevor Rabin and Rick Wakeman – along with bassist Lee Pomeroy and drummer Lou Molino – performed two hours of Yes music at the a three-quarters full Chicago Theater, and judging from the audience response, this was the version of Yes they preferred. Wakeman in particular has long-claimed that any Yes without frontman Anderson is no Yes at all, though there are probably some who say the same of guitarist Steve Howe, who continued to tour last summer under the Yes moniker even after Alan White suffered a back injury. Perhaps one day Howe and Anderson will perform on the same stage together, though it’ll have to be soon: Anderson is now 72, and Howe 69.

Balancing the setlist nicely between long-time Yes favorites and songs from the Rabin-era, the transition from prog-rock to pop and back again at times felt jolting, but it also kept the concert from falling under its own weight of self-importance. The group performed four songs from Yes’s resurgent album 90125, one from 1987’s Big Generator (“The Rhythm of Love”) and one from Union (“Lift Me Up”), which allowed Rabin to shine in more familiar territory. Oddly absent were any songs from 1994’s Talk, an album many Yes fans believe is underrated. (I am not one of them.)

Beyond that, the setlist consisted of many of the usual favorites, along with two songs I’d never seen performed live before – a shortened “Perpetual Change” and “Heart of the Sunrise" – and the concert pinnacled with an extended performance of the already monumental “Awaken” from Going for the One, clocking in at close to 20 minutes.

The band performed well together, with drummer Molino approaching the songs with the same rock-oriented technique of Alan White, and Pomeroy doing a terrific job imitating the deceased Squire, including a terrific bass solo during “The Fish.”  But the standouts for me were the voices of not only Anderson – whose vocal chords should one day be donated to science – but of Rabin, who sounded as strong and clear as he did when I last saw him perform 32 years ago.  The newly-added song “Changes” off of 1983’s 90125 allowed him to showcase his chops, and I was surprised to hear him deftly hit the high notes during the bridge. Anderson had to at times choose an alternate melody to the original (the first bridge of “And You And I”), though he seemed to be able to summon his high tenor voice when it counted most.

Wakeman sported a Cubs t-shirt underneath his signature cape – a wardrobe that might have warranted groans were it not for his well-known comedic nature – and surrounded himself with a keyboard setup that wouldn’t have looked out of place in 1972. I counted eight keyboards, including two Minimoogs, which is really kind of silly in this day and age, but there’s no denying his ability and influence. Still, to my ears, he’s a keyboardist who overplays, muddying mixes that would otherwise sound crisp and clean (and I can't stand the synthy-piano sound he prefers to the real thing), which is why it’s probably best that he wasn’t a part of the 80s Yes lineup. There were times in the show when I wanted him to stop playing so I could hear a signature Rabin or Squire lick, though I did notice that the mix from where I was sitting in the balcony was less clear than just one section to my right, so some of the what I heard might have been attributed to poor acoustics more than Rick’s playing.

Rabin primarily handled the licks of Steve Howe well, though there were times when I missed Howe’s subtleties, such as the intro and breakdown of “And You and I,” and the jazz-influenced solo of “Perpetual Change.” Rabin is a different type of guitarist, and Anderson told him from the get-go to approach the songs in his own way.  Mission accomplished, and largely successful.

I suspect this will be the last time I see any of Yes’s members perform, be it under the name Yes, ARW, GTR, Bruford-Moraz or otherwise. I saw some semblance of Yes perform in 1984, 1985 (Bruford-Moraz), 1986 (GTR), 2001, 2002, 2004, 2008, 2011 and now 2016, not officially as Yes, but in my book Yes by any other name is still Yes.  It’s been a hell of ride for these prog-rockers. Perhaps someday soon it can culminate with an induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Yard: Just Die Already

This fall, as temperatures have continued to ride high into the 70s, I've occasionally peered from my back window into a yard of still flourishing foliage, blooming impatiens and lush grass, and been reminded of something Seinfeld’s Elaine Benes once said while stuck in a theater showing an interminable movie:

I second this sentiment, not about The English Patient – a film I actually like (I have a thing for Juliette Binoche, so…) – but to my thriving yard.

Just die already. Die. 

Curse you, global warming. I live in the upper Midwest for a reason. I don’t want an endless summer when every day looks the same. The Albert Hammond song is not a picture of paradise for me. It’s a picture of monotony: mowing and watering, trimming and edging, pruning and planting, spraying and harvesting. The whole point of winter is to put a stop to all this nonsense, so we can instead head toward the Great Indoors and focus our attention on other things, like patching and painting, washing and dusting, organizing and decluttering, or – if you’re like me and put off til tomorrow what you could just as easily do today – watching marathon sessions of obscure music documentaries.

Come spring, when the last patches of snow recede into the dark earth, then I’ll be ready to begin again. Like baseball season, I need a four month hiatus to reinvigorate the desire to dirty up the hands and cultivate the gift of growing something, of fostering new life from dormant dirt.

Until that time, give it a rest. If temperatures continue to rise and Chicago’s growing season extends into November every year, I’ll be forced to abort my Illinoisan residence and head north. 

And if Trump wins next Tuesday, further north still (if Canada will take me).

The Music of 1971

In David Hepworth’s Never a Dull Moment: 1971 – the Year that Rock Exploded, the author makes a case for why the year is “the most creative, most innovative, most interesting, and longest-resounding year of that era,” and it’s a pretty darn convincing case. Sure, we all think that the music of our pivotal years is the best. I get a kick out of reading comments on Youtube for music that was released just fifteen years ago (“This song reminds me so much of my childhood!”) and there remains a special place in my heart for the years 1978 through about 1983 (don’t make me pin down an exact year), but Hepworth claims “there’s an important difference in the case of me and 1971. The difference is this. I’m right.”

Certainly no one can deny the incredible output of 1971. Carol King: Tapestry, Yes: The Yes Album and Fragile, The Who: Who’s Next, The Rolling Stones: Sticky Fingers, Rod Stewart: Every Picture Tells a Story, David Bowie: Hunky Dory, Joni Mitchell: Blue, Bill Withers: Just As I Am, Van Morrison: Tupelo Honey, Pink Floyd: Meddle, Nick Drake: Bryter Layter, Marvin Gaye: What’s Going On, Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin IV, John Lennon: Imagine, Genesis: Nursery Cryme, Elton John: Madman Across the Water, Harry Nilsson: Nilsson Schmilsson, Don McLean: American Pie, The Doors: L.A. Woman, Badfinger: Sraight Up, James Taylor: Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon, and on and on.

Pretty impressive stuff. Hell, I just went through the list, and even though I was only three years-old during the release of most of these records, I actually own seventeen albums from 1971, not to mention a few compilations with songs released from that year. I doubt I own that many albums from any other single year since. (Though I'd have to check. Hmmm...sounds like a fun challenge).

And this is part of the author’s case: that the releases of 1971 “have proved to have lasting appeal,” as many of the artist are still around, playing bigger venues today than they did nearly fifty years ago, and many of the songs still resonate with young listeners. The output of 1971 may not include your favorite albums of all-time, but you can’t argue against their lasting influence. My three kids and I played a mini concert in my back yard last summer, with each of us choosing one song to play. My son surprisingly picked Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” while I chose Carole King’s “I Feel the Earth Move.” Sure enough. Both 1971. My daughters and I saw The Who (or half of them, anyhow) last year, the concert culminating in the rousing 1971 anthem of "Baba O'Riley," and my son the drummer has familiarized himself with Bonham’s work on “Rock and Roll” and “When the Levee Breaks.” For many artists, 1971 epitomizes their peak. (The author writes, “If all we knew of David Bowie was what he did in 1971, it would be more than enough.”)

I assumed Never a Dull Moment would be little more than a month by month listing of each released album along with a few pages about the recording and popular reaction, but it’s much more in-depth than that, delving into topics such as radio marketing, record stores, record labels and management, and Hepworth even does a nice job of anchoring his prose in the world events that were happening at the time.

And the prose is excellent.  Fresh off the heels of reading music producer Glynn John’s book, Sound Man, I was pleased to return to legitimately good writing. (John’s can produce, but the guy most certainly cannot write). As an example, here’s a sentence about how in a year when a Beatles greatest hits album didn’t even exist, bands began to learn about the lure of nostalgia, most notably The Beach Boys with their album Surf’s Up, which would mark the beginning of celebrating the style that first propelled the band into stardom in the mid-60s, and which wouldn’t stop for the next forty years. “But as one unmemorable album follows another from premature acclaim to the bargain bin of history, each auspicious beginning is followed by the familiar flatness, each round of press interviews and TV appearances gives way to faint embarrassment as the new songs are dropped from the set list never to return, we in the audience increasingly identify with the line that makes a popular T-shirt slogan at festivals – ‘Play some old.’”

Nice! I don't agree with the sentiment, as I've always favored bands who've continued to create music worth listening to (Rush, Jackson Browne, Joe Jackson, James Taylor, etc.), but it's hard to argue against the massive nostalgic success of Elton John, The Rolling Stones and The Who, as they continue to tour year after year in front of more and more fans playing the same old songs. Hepworth writes: "At the time, 1971 didn't feel like a particularly exceptional year. The habit of looking back, which is now so much a part of the music media game, and of which this book is a part, hadn't been invented." But the seeds of nostalgia were sown. On the last day of 1971, Bob Dylan joined The Band on stage and announced his last song, a composition he hadn't performed in years. Hepworth writes: "Then, as he would do for the rest of his life, he launched into 'Like a Rolling Stone.'  Heritage rock was born."