Real Life Rock (250 page)

9
Larry Kegan, Howard Rutman, Robert Zimmerman, “Let the Good Times Roll,” “Boppin' the Blues,” “I Want You to be My Girl,” “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” “Confidential,” and “Ready Teddy.”

10
“Bob Dylan's American Journey, 1956–1966” (Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota)
On Christmas Eve 1956, three boys, two 14 and one 15, pooled their quarters for the record machine at Terline Music in St. Paul, Minnesota. You put in a coin and got about 30 seconds, so with the 15-year-old pounding a piano they rushed to harmonize on whatever they could until the machine cut off, and then started up again with another tune. It sounds like a slumber party, and what's surprising is not that one of these kids turned into Bob Dylan, but that less than a year later he was—as pictured in a recently discovered photo featured in the Weisman show—singing the same songs in a band called the Golden Chords, commanding a stage with fervor and confidence, dressing pretty much as he dresses now: flash coat, dark pants, dark shirt, white tie.

The Believer 2008
2014

SEPTEMBER
2008

1
Prime Suspect 7—The Final Act,
directed by Philip Martin, written by Frank Deasy (Acorn Media, 2006)
You suspect the father of a missing schoolgirl until he puts his head inside her backpack as if he knows this is as close to her as he'll ever get again. “Did you ever hear that song, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit'?”

2
Bonnie “Prince” Billy,
Lie Down in the Light
(Drag City)
For years Will Oldham—traveling under variations of the name Palace, as himself, as a figment of his own imagination, no doubt under names I've missed—has written and sung from an Appalachian highlands that may as well be his own imagined country. But in his music Oldham gets to live there, and there he does what he wants; even as you might swoon at their delicacy, the songs give off the smell of perversity. Here he sings as the sole member of his own religion—and you can't tell if the faith has all but died out or if the prophet has yet to find his first follower. He can call up a company of selves at will, to watch, to witness, then make them disappear before the revelation comes: “Kneel down to please me,” he says, as caught between sex and adoration as Madonna in “Like a Prayer,” but his voice tells you he's the supplicant. From song to song the feeling is more abstract, harder to hold on to, beauty flashing like an animal in the forest you can't be sure you saw at all, just as in the moment you're convinced this person will never make a record this good again.

3
Howard Hampton writes (June 11, 2008)
“I stumbled on Dylan's endorsement of Obama (
London Times
, June 5: ‘Right now America is in a state of upheaval. Poverty is demoralizing. You can't expect people to have the virtue of purity when they are poor. But we've got this guy out there right now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up—Barack Obama. . . . Am I hopeful? Yes, I'm hopeful that things might change. Some things are going to have to'). Makes sense that there would be that spark of recognition—the thing that amazes me is that the Clintons never seemed to get that they were dealing with someone more formidable than a Howard Dean in blackface. So they wound up looking like Baez and Seeger, the Old Regime, undone by the sound of a greater sense of possibility than they were willing to entertain—hence the whole ‘Electability' issue would frame the election as ‘No We Can't' (elect a black man) vs. ‘Yes We Can' (dream a better country, as MLK or poor tortured RFK did once upon a time).”

4
Shannon McArdle,
Summer of the Whore
(Bar/None)
Late of the Mendoza Line, for the title song McArdle summons a slow shame ballad, full of portent and dread, a pop form that goes back to the early '60s (“Suspicion,” “Endless Sleep”) and has never worn out, maybe because so few have had the nerve to try it. It's a self-lacerating heartbreaker (“A little filth for my record,” the singer snaps over a dead marriage)—with the reverb on the guitar making each note a warning, the voice seems to grow thinner and stronger at the same time.

5
Counting Crows,
Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings
(DGC)
Why is it so uncool to like Counting Crows? Because Adam Duritz has made so much money that he can wear his heart like a coat instead of merely sticking it on his sleeve? “1492,” the first thing you hear, is Jon Langford's “Lost in America” with Columbus standing in for John Henry, relentless, ridiculous, embarrassed, defiant, and despite hilariously pretentious song titles as the album winds on (“When I Dream of Michelangelo,” “On a Tuesday in Amsterdam Long Ago”), its echo never really dies out.

6
Hoagie's Restaurant, Hopkins, Minnesota
A family place filled with placards and metal ads, some original (Uncle Remus Syrup: “Dis sho' am good,” says an old black man), some reproductions, and one bizarre anachronism: a go-getter dressed in '50s suit and tie and a sly grin holding up an LP under a banner:
EDUCATION: THE NEXT BEST THING TO A RECORD DEAL
.