Real Life Rock (234 page)

7
Henry Flynt and the Insurrections,
“I Don't Wanna”
(Locust Music)
1966 Fluxus protest music from Flynt, an experimental troublemaker (he subbed with the Velvet Underground and denounced Karlheinz Stockhausen as a racist who didn't understand the Everly Brothers) with a reedy, old-timey voice and a hot, hard-to-follow guitar style. On the cover, he looks like he's submitting a high school science project; song by song he chants cut-up denunciations of the Vietnam War and Wall Street and hits atonal Carl Perkins notes while drummer Walter de Maria, who would go on to erect the celebrated land-art work
Lightning Field
in New Mexico in 1977, runs around the room hitting things at random, and in time.

8
Tarbox Ramblers, “Country Blues,” on
A Fix Back East
(Rounder)
Producer Jim Dickinson gets a big, echoey
Time Out of Mind
sound, which makes it feel as if everything here is taking place inside the not altogether sane head of the singer. But Michael Tarbox is so growly he might as well be a bear, and when he applies himself to Dock Boggs's 1927 testament to a wasted life, the startling boogie arrangement makes his voice feel like a put-up job. But his slide guitar makes another voice—and when Tarbox comes back singing in an almost delirious mode, he takes the song out of his head and into some ugly bar, where new people keep turning up even if no one's left for years.

9
Carole King for John Kerry (
caroleking.com
, Feb. 2)
King was all over New Hampshire before the primary, singing “I Feel the Earth Move” at house parties and “You've Got a Friend” at benefit concerts—but has she played “The Locomotion”? “One Fine Day”? Or redone Bobby Vee's “It Might as Well Rain Until September” as “It Might as Well Rain Until November”—whatever that would mean?

10
Steve Weinstein passes on news of the “Hell Freezes Over Tour” (New England Ticketmaster Ticket Alert posting, Jan. 29)
Events included Rufus Wainwright at Toad's Place in New Haven, Carrot Top at the State Theater in Portland, Maine, Lynard Skynard (or imposters who can't spell) and 38 Special (wonder if they can still pull off their great “If I'd Been the One”), Barenaked Ladies, and “An Evening with Christ . . .”—which a click on the link revealed to be cheap at the price, $25, even if “Christ” turned out to be Christine Lavin.

MARCH
3, 2004

1
Michael Pitt and the Twins of Evil, “Hey Joe,” from
The Dreamers: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
(Nettwerk America)
This movie about three young people making a whole world out of movies, sex, and parental allowances in a Paris apartment as the near-revolution of May '68 takes place outside is not as good as it should be. It pulls its punches; it doesn't go far enough. It may
also be that when the trio finally run out into the street, the demonstration that sweeps them up feels fake not only because it's poorly staged, but because the world that's been left behind was so complete—and, at just that moment, so dangerous. Lead actor Michael Pitt's thuggishly casual reading of the '60s non-classic “Hey Joe”—not to mention the amazingly precise '60s guitar playing by (presumably) half of his backing band, which cuts the tune down to its molecules—seems to have nothing to do with this or anything else in the film, but it sounds right.

2
Pink Nasty,
Mule School
(Fanatic)
From Wichita, a young woman who acts like Maggie Gyllenhaal's characters and sings with the restraint of country artist Kelly Willis—with occasional slips into the floridness of Lucinda Williams. There's a wonderfully thrown-away ditty called “What the Fuck”; there's “Missing the Boat,” a disconcerting piece that takes two minutes to find its shape and when it does breaks into a realism that makes “I'll drink beer for you, I'd have sex with you, I'll drink beer for you” feel like a letter to someone the singer will never write to again.

3
Debbie Geller, “America's Beatlemania Hangover” (BBC News, Feb. 7)
The only 40th-anniversary-of-the-Beatles-on-Ed-Sullivan tribute worth noting. As a girl in a “left-wing, atheist, divorced family” in Levittown, Long Island, “the archetype of American suburbia,” Geller has no answer when kids ask her what religion she is: “I had never even heard the word before.” She isn't “so much bullied as barely tolerated.” But then suddenly everyone has to have a favorite Beatle, and everyone wants to know who everyone else's is: “A girlish democracy was created.” Watching on February 7, 1964, she realizes it's George: “During the postmortem at school the next morning, I announced my discovery with confidence. Although Paul was the undisputed favorite, my choice was accepted with respect. And no one ever made fun of me again.”

4
Bonnie “Prince” Billy,
Bonnie “Prince” Billy Sings Greatest Palace Music
(Drag City)
Aren't tribute albums terrible? And this is a self-tribute album—smug versions of great Palace songs by Will Oldham, a.k.a. Palace—a whole new terrible genre.

5
Old Crow Medicine Show,
O.C.M.S.
(Nettwerk America)
Why people hate folk music.