Real Life Rock (191 page)

5
North Mississippi Allstars,
51 Phantom
(Tone-Cool)
On the rough blues trio's debut album
Shake Hands With Shorty
there was casual proof that a hundred years had not begun to exhaust “Casey Jones,” but here old-time seems to mean the '60s. The cover shows a Highway 51 sign, but from the embarrassingly poor lurch into the Allman Brothers' “Blue Sky” in “Lord Have Mercy” to the cover-band Hendrixisms of “Circle in the Sky,” this band is running on fumes.

6
Never Mind Bono at the World Economic Forum in New York, Here's the Edge at “The Future of Theoretical Physics and Cosmology” in Cambridge (Jan. 11)
Real Life Rock science correspondent Steve Weinstein: “The Edge was seen chatting with astrophysicist Sir Martin Rees following Rees's talk at the recent 60th birthday party for Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University. Hawking is known as the Keith Richards of theoretical physicists, and indeed remarked to one bystander that despite his recent brush with death while speeding in his new wheelchair, he ‘wasn't lookin too good but [he] was feelin' real well.'

“The Edge has recently been collaborating with Hawking on a bold new idea intended to make sense of the ill-defined Euclidean path integral that plays a central role in Hawking's ‘no-boundary' proposal for the initial state of the universe. Later in the evening, the U2 guitarist was spotted with cosmologist Neil Turok in the VIP ‘behind Hawking' area, with a rare view of the screen on which Hawking's communications appear. The Edge reportedly needled Turok for stealing U2's ‘Unforgettable Fire' title for his recent paper with Khoury, Ovurt and Steinhardt on what they call ‘The Ekpyrotic (“out of fire”) Universe.'

“The evening concluded with a song to Hawking written by general relativity expert Bernard Carr, and performed by Hawking's students and The Edge (vocals, not guitar). This was the high point of the evening to that moment, but it was eclipsed by the appearance of a Marilyn Monroe impersonator and then the Can-Can Dancers, six women in ‘Moulin Rouge' costumes displaying what some characterized as ‘a lot of leg.' ”

7
Jim Roll,
Inhabiting the Ball
(Telegraph Company)
With an album sponsored by the literary journal
McSweeney's
, the Ann Arbor singer offers educated folk music. The music is precious before it's anything else: the whole affair exists in quotation marks. The gimmick is that eight of 13 songs feature lyrics by novelists Rick Moody or Denis Johnson, the most interesting being Johnson's version of a 19th century murder ballad, “Handsome Daniel.” I've never heard Johnson sing, but I have seen him with a knife sticking out of his head in the movie of his
Jesus' Son
, and I'd bet he could put more into this song than the person who's singing it now.

8
Bill Keller, “Enron for Dummies,”
New York Times
(Jan. 26)
“How cool was Enron? About two years ago a
Fortune
writer likened utilities and energy companies to ‘a bunch of old fogies and their wives shuffling around halfheartedly to the not-so-stirring sounds of Guy Lombardo. . . . Suddenly young Elvis comes crashing through the skylight.' In this metaphor, the guy in the skin-tight-gold-lamé suit was Enron. The writer left out the part where Elvis eats himself to death.”

9
Bill Clinton, “Globalization,” Zellerbach Hall, University of California at Berkeley (Jan. 29)
The opening theme music was about 30 seconds of James Taylor crooning Stephen Foster's “Hard Times,” but the real music came from the speaker. There was a slide in Clinton's talk that is never present when he's using a teleprompter; here, for a well-organized, detailed, quietly passionate speech, which no doubt he's given many times but seemed made up on the spot, he wasn't even using notes. The rhythm was that of a man at ease with himself and not at ease with the world, which made it possible for him, unlike his replacement,
to speak as if the world was real, and not a construct of publicity. “You've seen him on television, you know what he thinks, he's a serious person,” Clinton said of Osama bin Laden. “ ‘Don't tell me about my common humanity, the only thing that matters about me is my difference,' ” he said, characterizing bin Laden and others who work from a position of absolute truth.

It was only a small step from one tribe of true believers to another: “I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't experienced it,” Clinton said of the refusal of the Republican Party, from Jan. 20, 1993 to Jan. 20, 2001, to accept the legitimacy of his presidency. The parallel drawn between Republicans and Islamicists—between those who know the world is theirs by right, and not yours—was unspoken, and unmissable.

10
Mary Chapin Carpenter and Anne Lamott, Royce Hall, UCLA (Jan. 26)
Both gave the adoring audience “the same glow of buoyant optimism,” Marc Weingarten reported in the
Los Angeles Times
. “However,” as Howard Hampton noted, “the DJ Shadow/Philip Roth show was postponed on account of darkness.”

FEBRUARY
25, 2002

1
Electrelane,
Rock It to the Moon
(Mr. Lady)
A dog barks quietly, holding time at bay; a Farfisa organ traces a small circle. A guitar breaks the stasis, voices complain from a distance, drums neatly set the first tune on its track. Before you know it you're on a deserted beach in some European spy novel with DJ Shadow providing the fog and ? and the Mysterians the chase music. By the second cut this four-woman instrumental combo from England has gone back to “Batman Theme,” which takes them into the same “Endless Tunnel” the forgotten San Francisco band Serpent Power got lost in in 1967, though here it opens into an amusement park. Deep in the background, you begin to pick up people talking. In the indecipherability and allure of what they're saying, the specter of Julee Cruise floating by seems like the most natural thing in the world. You realize you have no idea where the band will go next, or what unresolved 20th century image it will turn up—a Hans Bellmer doll under a police spotlight, Lauren Bacall walking out of a room, Bobby Kennedy waving to a crowd with that somber look he'd get, as if he knew.

2
The Executioner's Last Songs: Jon Langford and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts Consign Songs of Murder, Mob-Law & Cruel, Cruel Punishment to the Realm of Myth, Memory & History to Benefit the Illinois Death Penalty Moratorium Project, Volume 1
(Bloodshot)
Aren't tribute albums terrible? Even when they're for a good cause? Could it be that the finer the cause—and the Illinois Death Penalty Moratorium Project is not only a good cause, it has shocked the state and the nation with its success, which is to say with its proof of the inherent corruption of capital punishment—the worse the tribute album? Steve Earle's florid “Tom Dooley” is par for his course, but with Neko Case, Jon Langford and Sally Timms, Brett Sparks of the Handsome Family and Dean Schlabowske of the Waco Brothers, how else to explain why such imaginative and inventive performers fall so short of the likes of “Knoxville Girl,” “Poor Ellen Smith” and “Gary Gilmore's Eyes”—songs that are in their blood?