Stevie Wonder, "Tuesday Heartbreak"

Stevie Wonder is amazing. There, blog entry finished...

No, you want me to elaborate? Okay, here goes nothing...when I was a kid in the Eighties, Stevie Wonder was a big deal already. He was the guy behind the song that, in the title alone, captures everything that was at once so right and so wrong about the decade: "I Just Called to Say I Love You." As famously opined in High Fidelity the book and movie, no one could possibly consider that their favorite song. I recall exercising in elementary school to some of his other early-Eighties hits, and of course there he was in the all-star recording of "That's What Friends Are For," the kind of song that makes you kinda glad John Lennon didn't live to see it.

But like the man says in The Dark Knight, either you die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain, or at least "not as good as you once were." It's a sad fact that age-ism is a part of rock music, but it is; the older your favorite artist gets, the less likely he or she or they are to release anything that stands up to whatever put them on top in the first place (or, when they do, get "re-discovered" by an audience that might not have once embraced them, like the late-career resurgence of Johnny Cash). Some of my favorite artists are people whom I consider to have "lost it" at some chronological date in their careers, and whether they regain it or not is hard to say. Miley Cyrus ain't gonna be near as controversial in her seventies as she is in her twenties, I guess it would be fair to say.

But of course, Stevie in the Eighties could afford to slack off, for as I discovered later on he had a boatload of hits in the Sixties and Seventies. Enough really to excuse the treacly sentiment of "I Just Called" and perhaps even enough to point out that, if one chose to view it as such, said song was actually a clever take-down of the kind of sappy songs that Stevie's contemporaries Lionel Richie and Kenny Rogers (among others) were putting out in roughly the same time period. This is the man who gave the world "Signed, Sealed, Delivered," Innervisions, "Higher Ground," "I Was Made to Love Her," and so on and so forth. If he wanted to record an absolute piece of crap and release it on an unsuspecting public, why the hell couldn't he? In this way, you could almost say it was Stevie's Metal Machine Music.

But back to the Seventies, when Motown was in a bit of a culture change and Stevie released the album Talking Book. Marvin Gaye had thrown off the light, poppy sound that made his duets and made him a star, embracing a raw, funky sexuality that was at odds with Berry Gordy's insistance on appealing to the widest (and whitest) possible audience. Stevie was liberated from recording what the label wanted him to do and could now flex his artistic muscle. Talking Book, which has my all-time favorite "spooky song used in John Carpenter's The Thing" ("Superstition"), is loaded with great, great damn songs. But on listening to a mix CD I made a while back and coming across "Tuesday Heartbreak," I have to give it up for that track in particular.

Looking at the title alone, without knowing the song, you'd think "oh, I know what that's about." You'd be wrong. It's a funky, almost celebratory song about heartbreak. It's a joyful ode to the woes of seeing your woman in the arms of another man and the fact being that you can't do a damn thing about it. So just dance, you miserable bastard, dance.

Seriously, though, on an album full of songs that could be standards if they're not already ("I Believe (When I Fall In Love)," "You and I," "Blame It on the Sun"), this is a great, great song. Because when you have had actual honest-to-God heartbreak, you can only do the Joy Division, slashing-my-wrists emo stuff for so long (and believe me, JD and the Cure are perfect for just-broke-up or never-gonna-hear-from-her-again pain). You kinda have to embrace the possibility of change, but you're not blasting James Brown's "I Feel Good" just yet. "Tuesday Heartbreak" is a good reminder that, even when your heart is breaking, the dawn promises a new day. One good thing about getting older is the realization that, for as painful as it can be to get your heart broken, you will eventually learn to love again, and maybe even get it right this time around. But in the meantime, go ahead and shake your ass a little, you deserve it.

R.E.M., "Shiny Happy People"

Everytime I catch The Social Network on FX, I feel a little uneasy about logging into my Facebook account afterwords. If you accept even a fraction of the film as being historically accurate about the founding of the website, you have to acknowledge one uncomfortable truth: Mark Zuckerberg is exactly the kind of obsessive, creepy loner genius who would start an online "community" that is more often about satisfying your ego and gleaning information about people than it is about trying to promote community.

Granted, I've yet to log out of my Facebook account completely in protest over this, but I do take precautionary measures; I leave no mention of where I work on my profile (or here, for that matter), I try to refrain from saying things that I wouldn't say unless it were to a close friend or family member, I don't do the whole "pity party" parade once I've experienced an emotional trauma (often because, getting older and wiser about how a few minutes' satisfaction over calling someone a "bitch" online can lead to long, long periods of painful regret after, I figure it's time to grow up and let that pass). I do all of this and more because I've realized something that a lot of people younger than me (and some older than me) fail to grasp: social media is not your friend.

Twitter and Instagram and the like are often cited as "bringing people together," but often times a Twitter feed (especially that of a celebrity like Donald Trump or Justin Bieber) is often merely a sounding board for the absolute lack of tact or basic intelligence that many such "famous people" seem to lack. Of course, in the good ole days of Hollywood press machines, agents and studios could keep stars from making asses of themselves, and at first you could have made the argument that social media made us more aware of our celebrities' failings. But those are now carefully stage-managed and spin-controlled now, and I honestly have no interest in joining Twitter because if I only needed 140 characters to make my point, I'd be a different person than the long-winded bastard you see here before you.

I'm not saying that all social media is a bad thing, I'm just saying that a lot of it makes me uncomfortable, from the way it sometimes rewards asinine comments to the fact that the "community" it seemingly provides is an illusion. I'm "friends" with people I've never met (granted, most of them are writers or entertainers whose work I admire and who, if they got to really know me offline, might like me too. At least I'd like to think so ;-p). But the flip side to that is that I'm friends with people I know in the real, concrete, non-Matrix-y kind of world (i.e., flesh and blood) whom I otherwise wouldn't have contact with (either because they're far away geographically or because my body odor is repellant to them, one or the other). And sometimes I go months or even years without hearing from them, but every now and then I see a familiar name on my Facebook wall and feel some nostalgia for the times when that person was closer by.

My problem with Facebook is that, often times, it feeds into the general narcissim of this age, when people know Snooki but not any president other than Obama, Reagan, or Palmer off 24. There is a desire to be memorable, to have our lives documented like the celebrities we seem to admire now (and these celebrities don't even have to be talented; just look at the Kardashians, a family so ass-backwards that they released the sex tape *before* they got famous). People spend so much time taking pics with their phone that they then post to social media that they often don't think about what it is that motivates them to do so. I'm as guilty of it as the next person, but still: don't you ever see a bunch of people staring at their phones "documenting" the fact that they're at an event when the event is going on right in front of them and they can't even be bothered to look up from their screens?

Like I said, none of these musings have led me to leave Facebook, though I do watch myself more than I used to (or I try to, anyway). I would like to leave a legacy a little more substantial than a few clever comments on someone's Facebook wall, and I understand the reach for online "immortality" that seems to be Facebook's bread and butter. It's just something that I thought needed to be brought up, maybe in hopes of helping those out there who seem to live via Facebook (and not really live outside of it) realize that it's not healthy but it's not irredeemably bad either. "Shiny Happy People," for the record, has nothing to do with social media, but it's a song that R.E.M. profess to hate but which I'm sure has its own fan club on Facebook. I'm probably not going to join (I like the song, but there are far, far better R.E.M. songs out there), but I wouldn't discourage you from doing so. Just don't miss out on the actual life that's occurring while you're documenting it with your phone or tweeting about it at 140 characters per tweet, is all I ask.

The Faces, "Stay With Me"

In his new book Turn Around Bright Eyes, Rob Sheffield devotes a chapter to talking about Rod Stewart, a guy so uncool that he's cool merely by being uncool. No, really: the guy is so unpretentious that he's basicially a class unto himself. I remember Rod in the Eighties, mangling the Tom Waits song "Midnight Train," though to be honest I don't really know that Waits sung it any better (something about his "bad on purpose" gruff vocalizations never really appealed to me). Even then, Rod was something of a joke. Now he's coasting on the strength of his classics cover albums, proving that little old ladies like to throw their panties at the stage too.

But there's another side to Rod, the one that's on display in this song from the Faces (previously known as "the Small Faces," because everyone in the band was absurdly short. Imagine Frodo and the gang picking up instruments and you get the idea). You've heard this one, for sure, even if you've never heard any of the other songs I've written about thus far (I admit, my musical tastes can be pretty damn eclectic). It's a ballsy, hell-for-leather rocker from around the same time period as his first solo stuff ("Maggie May" and "Every Picture Tells a Story"), in that post-Beatles, pre-punk era that was both a godsend and an albatross around the neck of so many acts who were left over from the Sixties. Glam was happening, and David Bowie was dressing up like a spider from Mars to shock the parents and appeal to the teens. Mainstream, hetero rock stars started wearing make-up and high heels to appeal to the young folks. And Miley Cyrus wasn't even a glimmer in the eye of her daddy yet.

The early Seventies are justifiably regarded as an abysmal time for rock music, but that's not to say that there wasn't good stuff out there. I know when I first got into punk rock from later in that decade, it was easy to say that the years 1970-1975 were just awful, but a lot of good artists and music emerged from that era. It was the high point of Al Green, who was putting out soul records of unparalleled brilliance. The Kinks were re-imagining themselves as country gentlemen, the BeeGees (yes, the BeeGees) were laying the template for disco with great dance songs, and the Beatles post-break-up were having an interesting war of words via their solo records that would make E! News blush.

Rod Stewart, in this era, was a bit of a journeyman, coming to the Faces around the turn of the decade and injecting them (ha-ha!) with new life. Previously, the Small Faces had been a good but not great group, also-rans in terms of historical importance far behind the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, and others. You can hear the ballyhooed "debt to American blues artists" in Stewart's rough singing style, his voice crying out from pain and from the distinct lack of water to ease his larnyx. Truth be told, I haven't heard much of Rod's Faces work besides this song and "Oh La La" (off the Rushmore soundtrack), but it's hard to reconcile the walking punchline that he became with the guy who's singing here or on his early solo stuff. Sheffield opines that Stewart didn't give a lick about "artistry" and "importance," he was just looking to have a good time. And I bet no one had a better time than Rod Stewart from 1970 to...well, pretty much today as well. Not to be crass, but no one will ever shoot Rod Stewart because they misread Catcher In the Rye and thought Rod was a phoney. Of course he's a phoney, but he's having a hell of a time while he's doing it. You can't be angry at him for that.

The National, "Graceless"

First things first: as I suspected, I was premature in my "car loan paid off!"-ness last week, turns out I still owed about a hundred to the Bank of United States and Principalities and Whatnot. But I paid that this Friday, so *now* I'm paid off! Unless I am mistaken yet again.

Anywho: I am by my nature a comedian of sorts, a "funny guy" who often finds it hard to be serious. But every now and then, I like to go full-on emo and dress in Joy Division-style drab, or at least emotionally dress myself that way. Perhaps it's actual honest-to-goodness depression, or just me trying to take it down a few notches in the "Trevor is always making funny comments" department, because sometimes my funny comments become mean comments. And I am sensitive enough to know when I've crossed the line, though of course often it's in crossing that line that my awareness kicks in.

In those times, I have gravitated far from the feel-good pop music that is often on the radio at the time (seems like an epic time for cheesiness whenever I'm in a foul mood), far from the stuff that, in my own record collection, would normally be my go-to good-time music. I'm talking, of course, about listening to Radiohead.

Everyone knows Radiohead, so I don't need to explain who or what they are. But for a time there, between "OK Computer" and "Hail to the Thief," every band wanted to be them, or reacted against their sad-bastard rock (remember that it's songs from "The Bends" that are playing in Clueless when the screenwriter wanted Paul Rudd to seem like a dreamy, indie-rock depressed dude. But, you know, dreamy, in a former-stepbrother kind of way for Alicia Silverstone). Bands like Coldplay were compared to them because 1.) they sounded like Radiohead and 2.) they sucked compared to Radiohead (though in all fairness, Coldplay has launched onto their own delusions-of-grandeur rock, a' la U2, and truth be told, if they ever put out a best-of, I'd buy it). Radiohead themselves got tired of being "Radiohead," as anyone who's ever sat through that documentary of the "OK Computer" tour can attest. That's why they went into shitty, shitty electronic music.

You may disagree with me (and that is your right), but Thom Yorke and company went down the rabbithole after "Computer" and turned into the sort of detached "artists" that so often take themselves seriously, at the sake of what actually got them there in the first place. Yes, I loved "The Bends" (not when it came out, but later, when I'd had enough life experience in heartbreak and disappointment to "get" it), and "OK Computer" (whose hypnotic video for "Karma Police" still haunts my subconscious). But sometimes you follow a band for too long, and you lose that initial feeling that "these guys speak for me!" because they don't or you can speak for yourself or the lead singer turns out to be a dick or the guitarist wants to make a Spaghetti Western soundtrack on the side or the drummer explodes or what have you. I'm not saying that I wouldn't welcome a return of Radiohead back into my life with new music, but for the most part I'm good with anything pre-"Amnesiac." Because that was my shoe-gazing music.

Shoe-gazing, if you aren't familiar, is a handle created for neo-psychedelic English bands around the beginning of the Nineties (i.e., you're so stoned you gaze at your shoes while the band plays on), but it could just as well apply for downer music, because when you're down you look at your feet and wonder why they just don't wanna move. To me, the National is shoe-gazing music par excellence, and a future contender for "mope-rock kings" if they're not already. I'm barely familiar with anything to do with them, I caught a performance of this song (and I think "Don't Swallow the Cap" blended with it) on The Colbert Report, and I went out for the album shortly after. I won't front: this summer has been hard for me, and at the time the National were perfect. But I could only take so much of their admittedly entrancing doom and gloom; every now and then I might pop it into my car stereo (my chief means of listening to music of my own choosing), but after a day or two it's time to switch it up. My chief switch-to choice has been a Talking Heads best-of. Make of that what you will.

Perhaps the National can become my new favorite band, but I doubt it; musical love affairs start to decline as you age, as you can hear something a new artist is doing and remember it sounding like something you once loved and never quite trusting either again. And I'm not saying I hear Radiohead in the National (I get more of a Joy Division vibe, especially with the baritone lead singer), but Radiohead helped me out in a time of woe and strife as the National did, and for that I thank them both. Sometimes we need music to be happier than we are, sometimes we need it to be as sad or sadder. It succors us for a while, and then we move on. Like an old friend, it's always there when we need it, but sometimes we don't need it for a long, long time.