For the rest of the week, I'll be blogging about what the adults in Mohammed's Radio would choose as their favorite "Singles" songs.
“Into the flood again
Same old trip it was back then
So I made a big mistake
Try to see it once my way…”
- Would?
Terry’s favorite song is the darkest on the record. Regret
and loss through a heavy drug haze. “Would?” resonated because Terry was the
kind of teenager who hid his bruises under his dad’s old flannels. The kid who
got drunk with friends and high alone, and “Would?” has a basement feel: lights
out, candles lit, and dust swirling in the last bits of sun. Terry grew up
thinking he could channel the anger and bitterness into something artistic,
that he could overcome his feelings of isolation by becoming larger than life.
He didn’t; he became his dad.
When Dylan Thomas referred to the area of Wales where he grew up as "an ugly, lovely town" in "Reminisces of Childhood" he both set a future tone and gave perfect voice to a long held belief (at least in the rest of the UK): Wales is a beautiful country populated by hard people.
Welsh popular music then, is an interesting thing. Its two most well known exports are:
Two of the biggest voices out there. Beautiful and booming. Nary a rough edge to be seen. Odd, since the Welsh accent is considered quite harsh (given the overload of consonants).
Even when we move into the Punk, Post-Punk, and Indie Rock eras, the sweetness remains. Even when the lyrics are about death:
If the person filming this had widened the shot a bit, you'd absolutely see me standing in the audience, stage right, jumping around like a buffoon. So, I remain thankful that he/she stayed focused on Jon Langford. Langford, a newport boy and one of the greatest, most prolific musicians to come out of the first wave of UK Punk (seriously, I refer you to the Mekons, The Waco Brothers, The Three Johns, The Pine Valley Cosmonauts, and his solo stuff, unreservedly. I have seen him play NY, in various incarnations, 4 times in the last 3 years, and I already have my Mekons ticket for next month) is the patron saint of this play. His book about growing up in Wales, Skull Orchard, provided every detail I needed.
The Ugly/Lovely balance is evident in Langford's lyrics about his working class upbringing conveyed in a rich, melodic vocal, in the same way the "soul of the Sex Pistols in the body of Guns N' Roses' body" dynamic works for Wales's favorite sons, The Manic Street Preachers.
which is the loveliest Brit Pop song to ever begin with words as despairing as:
"Culture sucks down words
Itemise loathing and feed yourself smiles
Organise your safe tribal war
Hurt maim kill and enslave the ghetto.."
The contribution of Wales to UK Pop seems to be giving it a knife edge, an act never more brilliantly realized than by the latest Welsh band to inspire devotion, Los Campesinos.
"We are Beautiful; We are Doomed", a distinctly Welsh concept born in an "ugly, lovely town", complete with a gang chorus/pub singalong:
"Oh, we kid ourselves, there's future in the fuckingBut there is no fucking future..."
All of these artists were played constantly during the (relatively short) writing process because in the space of just over ten pages I wanted to get at this dichotomy: this love and indifference toward the same place. (Thomas was later quoted as saying "Wales is the land of my fathers, and my fathers can have it." which, in structure, is both a searing indictment and wistful rememberance)
In the play, "An Ugly, Lovely Town", there is no fucking, but there's love and indifference, there's a romantic past and a bleak future and a protagonist who's willing to love both equally.
The D3C Playlist: What we're listening to this week.
I'm revisiting Avail right now, a 90's band that fit neatly into the Punk Rock/Positive Hardcore sound pioneered by bands like 7 Seconds and Gorilla Biscuits. No dogma, just honest, heartfelt lyrics for us kids who missed the first (and second wave) of Hardcore but still felt earnest, dammit.
Their first two albums, Satiate and Dixie, didn't leave my stereo for two solid years. Their songs absolutely raged and swung: aggressive post punk guitars (the bass line that begins Bob's Crew is an obvious nod to Public Image Limited) mixed with a heavy crunch, the clear but slightly hoarse vocals, and goddamn, the build-ups and breakdowns just demanded you move. Try and sit still during Connection.
I was lucky enough to see Avail tour to support Dixie, and what made it even more amazing was that they were on a bill with two of my other favorite 90's Punk Bands: Rancid and The Queers. It was during NYC's CMJ fest, so I remember standing on a ridiculously long line outside of The Wetlands (a long defunct venue) while journalists, insiders, and people way hipper than I'll ever be filed in before us. (Much to the grumbling of the skinheads and guys in Poison Idea shirts ahead of us.)
The Queers opened and were great, and, in fact, are probably one of the only bands to pull off the "we sound just like the Ramones" shtick with anything approaching style and good humor, but when Avail hit the (too damn small) stage, it was the first time I felt like I was in an audience that functioned as a unit, that sang and danced as one. A feeling that has only been replicated for me two or three times since then.
Satiate was a blast of catchy Punk Rock, but Dixie was more aggressive, musically complex, and dealt, lyrically, with issues that not many Hardcore bands touched on, notably, body image:
As an alienated Punk , already uncomfortable in his own skin, that song resonated with me, so much so, that I bought one of their t-shirts. A bold move for a fat kid, since the only shirts they had were white.
Of course, I never wore it, too damn self conscious, so instead, I cut off the front image, and pinned it onto the back of my jacket, after carefully lettering these lyrics from Model onto it:
Big is a scar; you'd better get thin; the tanner you are, the more you fit in
Bullshit! You've got a disease. You follow the trends like the rest of the sheep!
Defiant enough, I felt.
Energized by that experience, I returned to my teenage dream of fronting a band. I wrote a bunch of lyrics that, looking back, weren't completelyembarrassing, booked some studio time, and screamed my lungs out for a couple of years in the mid-90's. Nothing came of it, but it was an action at a time when every single thing in my life demanded I "sit down and shut the fuck up."
Punk and Hardcore taught me to be contrary, as Crass so brilliantly put it, "Punk was once an answer to years of crap, a way of saying 'No!', when we'd always said 'Yes.'", but it also taught me to think bigger and broader and that there was a network of kids out there feeling the same way, and at the time, they all wanted to create something too, to find direction. There were scenes, of course, and dogma crept in, but the central maxim at the root of it all was: "Yeah, you can be a part of something, but isn't it better to start something?"
