Nobody Put the Joy in Joy Division: “Love Will Tear Us Apart”

I have this recurring fantasy (relax; it’s PG-rated) in which the girl I’m currently in love with has some sort of accident (non-fatal, though I don’t know that in my fantasy until I get to the hospital where she’s being treated), and I rush to the hospital and get to her room. She (whoever it is; the girl changes, but the fantasy stays the same) is happy to see me, or she’s asleep and won’t wake up for hours (it depends). So if she’s sleeping, I pull up a chair and camp out in her room, staying by her side until she wakes so that she knows…what? One of the things that the fantasy seems to confirm for me is that I tend to expect the worst, especially when it comes to interpersonal relationships. If she has to have a near-fatal accident for me to show that I care, why would she put up with that?

Not to get too personal than I need to be, but I’m at a loss to think of “happy couples” in my immediate social circle, especially in terms of family members. I know of a few relationships that I would consider healthy, non-needy on one or another partner’s part, and in general strong enough to take what the world throws at them. Everybody else lives in resentment and plotting to do away with one another. I exaggerate, but it would be safe to say that, when I’ve tried to have a relationship in the past, I’ve had to rely more on pop-culture than real-life experience to make it happen. And the fact that I’ve never really had a relationship with a woman (close, but no cigar) seems to confirm the inherent fallacy in trusting John Cusack to teach me anything I could use in my own life.

If you take a minute to look at some of the more celebrated couples in pop-culture or literary history, you’ll see what I mean. Romeo and Juliet killed each other; Mr. Rochester got Jane Eyre but not before losing his sight and one or more of his limbs; Catherine and Heathcliff had to die in order to be together; Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck couldn’t make it work. For a romantic story to be successful, it seems, it has to end right at the moment when a relationship begins. The music swells, the end credits roll, and we leave the theater glad that the couple ended up together (though we probably knew they would anyway). When they move in together and have their first fight over chores or the naming of their children, we’re long gone.

Illusions and fantasies; no matter I find myself unable to “make it happen” with a girl, I’m basing it all on stuff that never actually happened. I think that’s the real message of “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” the Joy Division song that always comes up as “typical Joy Division” (though it’s actually an atypical JD song, in my mind; “Transmission” might be more representative, or “Digital.” Basically, if it’s a one-word title, you can’t go wrong when it comes to Ian Curtis and the boys). Granted, the song references a situation that Curtis, in his early twenties, found himself in: a marriage that wasn’t working because the couple had married young (though Ian’s fooling around with a Belgian female journalist didn’t help), and the dying embers of the relationship were leaving a sour taste in his mouth. But as the man says, you bring your own meaning to anything you read, and once the work of art leaves the hands of the creator it becomes all things to all people. Hell, “Born in the USA” was co-opted by Reagan despite its obvious rejection of the very gung-ho patriotism he and his ilk professed. When I hear the song, I hear Ian Curtis, but I also hear all the times I’ve come up short, or the girl I’ve professed love for didn’t quite measure up or deserve my efforts (lest you think I’m full of myself, I usually come to the conclusion that, as Jimmy Buffett says, it’s my own damn fault. But sometimes I fall for the glamorous exterior before getting a chance to see the xenomorphic man-eater beneath the surface).

Love doesn’t have to be stressful or doomed, of course, but my experience has been of the “nerdy sidekick who gets an axe to the head via the serial killer in the woods” type. I’m a cynic because I’ve had my heart broken one time too many, but I’m a sentimentalist at heart. I’ve used mix CDs to say things I couldn’t say in person, and I’ve realized too late that I should’ve just said what I needed to say (how the hell I worked John Mayer, Jimmy Buffett, Ronald Reagan, and Bruce Springsteen into a post about a Joy Division song is beyond me, but it just happened). Such is life.

Ian Curtis’ widow Deborah wrote a memoir of her time with the Joy Division front man, which was turned into the movie “Control.” She says that Ian in essence never grew and never wanted to, saying that he wanted to die before he was twenty-five (when he killed himself, he was a couple of months shy of twenty-four). He bought into the romantic myth of living fast, dying young, and leaving a good-looking corpse (though his idol, David Bowie, only did the living fast part, and is an esteemed rock icon past the age of sixty). Real life, with an early marriage and epilepsy, intruded on that, and he couldn’t handle the life of the rock star while also working nine-to-five and leaving a wife and daughter behind when he went on the road. I think it’s not quite as cut-and-dry as that, whether you call that “cut-and-dry” or not. But if he couldn’t handle grown-up life with all its complications and compromises, I can’t say I blame him. It’s scary being grown-up, even if you don’t have the added pressure of a mortgage, a wife, and a young daughter as well as a thriving career as the lead singer of the most important post-punk band ever.

Maybe we need the fantasies to get us through, then, when the real-life alternative is either so bleak or so dull that we wonder why we bothered. The movies almost always end before a relationship really begins (or after it’s over, like “(500) Days of Summer,” which then went back to what went wrong). Granted, it can be crushing when the person we end up with doesn’t live up to the ideal. But as one of the characters in that movie says, why wait for a fantasy girl when there might be someone in real life who’s better, because she’s real?

Sweetest Thing, U2

When a band tries simply to render an artistic vision and fame is a side-benefit that they didn’t see coming and have an ambiguous relationship at best with, we applaud them. When they start out telling people “we’re gonna be the biggest band in the world” and then, well, become the biggest band in the world, doing entire concerts from inside a giant lemon, we call them U2 and we say they’re wankers. At least we do if we’re online.

Once upon a time, I became a regular visitor to the website New Order Online, and by “regular” I mean “I spent hours there arguing the merits of various late-twentieth-century popular music artists such as a certain Irish quartet who you may have heard of. In fact, if you’ve never heard of New Order, you probably don’t want to visit that particular website; we would’ve reamed you for your lack of knowledge. New Order, in brief Cliff’s Notes version, once was a post-punk outfit named Joy Division, until Ian Curtis (the lead singer) killed himself and his bandmates had to decide whether or not to carry on. In one of history’s nice little coincidences, AC/DC were going through the same period of grief versus practical concerns that same year, 1980. They got Brian Johnson, who sounded a lot like Bon Scott, and went on to be even bigger. Joy Division changed to New Order, elected guitarist Bernard Sumner to front-man position, and went electronic. And they were great; trust me, a blind download of “Substance” (their best-of circa 1987) would be worth your money. But they never got to be as big as they should have.

Or as big as U2 became…

You’ve heard of U2; from the beginning, they made quite a racket, and they’re still at it. I don’t even have to pretend to offer a history lesson or highlight any of their songs, because you’ve heard them. In fact, they’re so omnipresent that I think this is part of why people absolutely hate them. It’s far more fashionable (and frankly more fun) to mock Bono’s pretensions at being a world statesman (though it turns out he’s pretty good at it) or consider the band as a whole as merely imitators and not innovators, benefiting from America’s fascination with anything that has a foreign accent, seems exotic without being threatening, and rocks in an arena-rock, balls-to-the-wall way.

And I was right there at the barricades, bagging on Bono and the boys even as…well, even as I had to admit that I liked their music. Most of these essays are about music that was big during my youth, and I think that’s the way a lot of people’s iPod songlists are: as much as you want to think you’re hip and with it, the songs you listen to the most are the ones you grew up with or associate with different times in your life (thus the autobiographical nature of many of these essays). U2 might be the Train of the Eighties, except for the fact that they did great, great songs. My cousin Brandon is a big U2 fan, with zero trace of irony in his fandom.

But being a fan doesn’t mean you can’t hold the band’s feet to the fire when they do something you can’t get behind. I’m sure if you asked him, he could name a few times when U2 let him down, or released something that wasn’t up to their previous standards. But something that I’ve noticed with even the songs that I didn’t care for first time around: eventually they grow on you. For every fist-pumping “Bad” that snares you in from the first lyrics or drum break, there’s a “Sweetest Thing” that seems nice enough but nothing to write home about, until it worms its way into your cerebral complex and makes its case.

For all the bombast that they’re known for, U2 can be surprisingly quiet when they want to be. Even “One” is more restrained, I think, than the usual crowd-pleaser. And “Sweetest Thing” is that rarest of U2 songs past a certain point in their recording history: it’s just a love song, albeit with an edge (get it? “Edge!”) of melancholy. Once upon a time, U2 sang simple songs about simple emotions in a complicated way. Oh, and Bono is one of the best singers in rock history. Yes, he really is, and “Sweetest Thing” is a good reminder of that. I think so, anyway.

Picking on a popular artist is fun, no doubt, and I enjoy bagging on so many bands and artists that I can’t really say I’d ever really like even in an ironic way. But I like U2, I don’t love them but I like them, and I like some if not all of their music. I may envy them their money, fame, ability to help charity, lack of a day job, and so on. But I like them, enough to mock them on occasion. But you know I don’t really mean it.

“Do You Want to Know a Secret?” Well, Do You?

Love is pretty messed-up when you’re in middle school; for one thing, you can’t drive, so you have to be chaperoned if you’re lucky enough to get a date. If you have zits and glasses with lenses the thickness of bullet-proof glass, forget it; you won’t have to worry much about whether anyone can chaperone you.

When you get to high school, it’s supposed to be better, but it isn’t; after a couple of years of feeling like the world’s biggest pizza-face, your confidence is at an all-time low and you don’t feel much like even trying, even when you’re a senior, you’re on the school newspaper with a cute freshman cheerleader, and you’re pretty sure she likes you. Well, maybe.

Becky was that cheerleader, and she was cute. Her middle name was “Mildred,” which I still remember after all these years because it seemed like a ridiculously old name for someone so young to have, even if it was her middle name. Ours was not a great love story, by any stretch of the imagination (I doubt she’d remember me today, I looked her up on Facebook once because I was feeling nostalgic for high school romances that never were and what I saw seems to confirm my belief that she failed to carry a torch for me after I went to college and then came back to work at a grocery store to pay off some loans I may have reneged on regarding my supposed education), but I’d like to think maybe I contributed to her overall growth as a person. Is that too much to ask? Yes, yes it is.

The prom came around towards the end of senior year, and I did what any right-thinking male would do; I had a mutual friend ask Becky if she wanted to go with me. Girls like that when guys can’t approach them and have to use a friend, right? She was already going with someone (because male seniors like to scan the freshman talent pool before they officially leave high school, though they’ll be back for all the football games now that they can smoke without the principal or other authority figures giving them hell about it), so I went stag. I was also working through a lingering crush on Brooke, a girl I’d met who shared my obsession with the Beatles at a time when Nirvana-wannabes and the Smashing Pumpkins were ruling the roost. So I got to watch the two girls I sorta liked dancing with other guys all night, in my rented tux that cost more than I’ve probably ever made on any subsequent paychecks in my working life.

The Beatles were supposed to guide me in the ways of love, but as I discovered from reading about them, they were pretty bad at it. Apart from the random groupies over the years, John married Yoko (which I took at the time as a sign of mental instability on his part), Ringo married a Bond girl (not too shabby, even though it’s 007’s sloppy seconds), George lost his wife to Eric Clapton (I prefer his work with the Yardbirds to his AOR Eighties songs), and Paul managed to have happiness with Linda before she died and he found himself without a leg to stand on in divorce court with Heather Mills (low blow, I know, but I’m a gutter-dwelling comedian). “Do You Want to Know a Secret” is from the period when they were naïve, just as I was, and while it’s not the most amazing Beatles song or George vocal, it’s appropriate. High school is ridiculous, in retrospect, and my avoidance of Becky probably cost me at best a couple months of fun, before I went off to college. That’s *if* she liked me then…and I can’t say for sure about that.

I did have her phone number when I came back from college, and one night on a dare I called it from the pay phone outside the grocery store I worked at (this was a time when you still had pay phones; believe me, I know how this ages me but I have to deal with it). When a guy picked up (and started asking “hello?” repeatedly when I just stood there, unable to think of a viable reason to call), I knew it was over. I wasn’t sad, actually, or at least I don’t remember being so. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I didn’t know anything about love then, I think. I know more about it now, and I can say with certainty that I did not love Becky…at least, I don’t *think* I loved her.

Who the hell knows?

“Fall In Love With Me,” Iggy Pop

“The Adventures of Pete and Pete” is a show that I treasure having had the chance to see when it first aired on Nickelodeon, back before it became simple a nostalgic touchstone for thousands of former kids (and in my case, at the time that it was on, former pre-teens) to join Facebook groups about. There was something deliciously off about the show, as it defied the “Saved By the Bell” model of “preppy kids with whom I have nothing in common” by featuring kids whose lives were absurd, even bizarre. It prepared me for the adult world, in a way, by showing that grown-ups didn’t have it any better figured out than us kids. It was the anti-“Wonder Years,” though I liked that show too. I watched a lot of TV as a kid, is what I’m saying.

Iggy Pop, the once and future king of Detroit’s seedier rock and roll scene, became a regular character on the show, playing the father of Young Pete’s best female friend (when I see Michelle Trachtenburg today, all sexy and hot, I feel like a dirty old man because I remember when she was a young’un. It’s the same thing with the Olsen twins, though they made these easier for former “Full House” viewers by going on the “no food shall pass between these lips” diet). At the time, I had no idea who Iggy was, nor was I aware of the truly subversive notion that having him on a kid’s show was. This was back when Nickelodeon didn’t try to out-Disney Disney, by having their headliners record horrible records as well as do horrible shows with canned laughter accompanying sub-Three Stooges physical comedy (funny how I went with a Three Stooges reference there, given that Iggy’s band was the Stooges).

Iggy Pop, as I later learned, was the doped-up, strung-out lead singer of America’s best rock band that no one had ever heard of, the Stooges. I bought their first album, simply called “The Stooges,” and while I eventually sold it I did wear the hell out of it at times, because it was great. “Raw Power” I didn’t respond to quite as much (the touches of glam rock might have something to do with it; there was one rock genre that I could never truly embrace, either because I’m a latent homophobe or the music was on the whole iffy. I prefer to think the latter, as my appreciation of the Smiths and their ambiguous singer Morrissey gives me the right to say I’m not homophobic. Granted, that’s like saying I can’t be racist because I have black friends). But it was his 1977 solo record “Lust for Life,” with the title track and “The Passenger” and “Success” and “Fall In Love With Me,” that I really liked. I enjoyed the Road Warrior-esque “Passenger” because at the time I wasn’t driving myself, I relied on rides from friends, and the extent to which we were still friends depended on how often they were willing to cart my lazy ass around with them.

“Fall In Love With Me,” coming as it does from the admittedly creepy Iggy (just look at the album cover and tell me you don’t get the “windowless van full of puppies” vibe), is a tender love song, albeit one couched in drug addiction in the druggiest of all European cities, West Berlin. Having some German ancestry led me to develop a lifelong interest in the country that gave the world Haydn, Hitler, and Hasselhoff. Part of it was trying to figure out why such an evil as the Holocaust came to pass, and how the German people dealt with that legacy of being the world’s worst mass murderers (hint: they embraced David Hasselhoff as their cultural icon. I think that indicates just how well they dealt with being Holocaust perpetrators). Being history’s bad guys can lead you to do nutty things, such as make Fassbinder films or ingest massive quantities of heroin, both of which Berlin was known for in the Seventies when Iggy and David Bowie (champion of the then-underappreciated Stooges and Velvet Underground) went there to record Pop’s first two solo records, “The Idiot” and “Lust.” The record as a whole reads almost like a great high followed by the lowest of lows, with some great guitar riffs thrown in. “Fall In Love” caps off the record, which began in the hedonistic rush of the title track (used to great effect to start off the greatest film about Scottish heroin junkies ever made, “Trainspotting”). It’s sinister and a little sexy, and it would be the perfect song of choice to play for your girlfriend if she were into bondage and leather.

Having said that, I’m not sure that I’d want a girl I date to be into that stuff. I didn’t like the idea of getting spanked as a child when it was my grandma; why would I get off on it now because it’s being done by a woman who might be paid to do so? Oh, the psycho-sexual hang-ups of a former English major don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, but still…I think about these things.

Iggy Pop and the Stooges reformed, and it was perhaps predictable that they recorded a new album, one which I’ve actively avoided (because it’s the rare creature that is a satisfying reunion album from a band that broke up when all their members were still in their twenties). But as always, I can stick with the classics. I found a best-of CD for the alt-country group Uncle Tupelo (literally the forefathers for Wilco, as Jeff Tweedy was in both bands) on which they cover “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” It’s a disarmingly clever cover, at least until the last furious onslaught of guitars at the end (I kinda enjoyed the almost bluegrass reading Tweedy and the boys gave the song). If there’s ever a “Pete and Pete” movie, I feel some hope that Iggy will be asked to revisit his part, and he’ll do a good job of it. But without the heroin, without the saloon in West Berlin, without the table made of wood, it’s just not the same, is it?

Abacab, Anyone? Phil Collins Versus Irony

The term “guilty pleasure” is something of an easy tag to hang onto something that you like but that you’re pretty sure other people in your social circle would use as evidence of a clear lack of mental stability on your part were they ever to be made aware of it. For years, as an undiagnosed case of OCD, I’m used to hiding away those things that I love or am interested in (there is a difference: I love obscure British punk bands of the late Seventies, but I’m interested in the Second World War, particularly the aerial combat aspect of it) from prying eyes. The iPod sees all, of course, and there are plenty of songs and artists I’m not entirely sure I want the outside world to know what some of my most-listened to songs are.

Of course, one could say that they have a particular artist on their iPod as comic relief, or an “ironic” commentary on the sad state of music. Such posing is encouraged when your friends are fellow music snobs and you don’t have to defend your hatred of the Eagles or your abhorrence for everything that comes out of Celine Dion’s mouth. You listen to college radio stations because “that’s where it’s at,” even if where it’s at sounds like an unhappy marriage of too much reverence for punk and too little proficiency with any musical instrument (or if the college rock station just plain out sucks in terms of what it can and cannot play; if anything ever even sniffed the Top Forty charts, it is about as welcome at some college radio stations as Louis Farrakhan at a Klan rally).

As I’ve aged and (hopefully) matured from my “up against the wall when the revolution comes” stance (yes, I actually thought a violent revolution might clear the boards of all traces of Creed, Celine, and so on), I find that a lot of the music I supposedly hated isn’t actually all that bad. I still maintain that the Eagles took Gram Parsons’ life work of fusing country and rock together and turned it into bland middle-of-the-road mush, but “Desperado” is a beautiful song. John Denver, far from being a musical antichrist, turned out to be a strong defender of any artist’s right to express him or herself without fear of government censorship. Hell, I actually kinda miss Scott Stapp, someone should see what he’s up to.

Phil Collins is someone about whom very few people have a neutral response, at least in the circles I used to run in. He’s either the antichrist when it comes to synthesizer-heavy Eighties pop music or a great drummer and singer who can be excused his excesses because in the long run he contributed one truly great song to Western civilization (“In the Air Tonight”) and a lot of pretty good tunes with Genesis and on his own. I remember Collins during his heyday (not to turn this whole exercise into a nostalgic exercise where I constantly talk about the Eighties, but I’m a slave to the format and it’s bound to come up when you’re talking about Phil that you have to talk about the time period during which he was the balding, English version of Jacko). His story is a little sadder now; when last I saw anything about him, he was in “Rolling Stone” revealing that he has some sort of muscular or skeletal condition that means he can’t play the drums anymore.

Now that’s just sad, when someone who’s worked his whole life to be great at something is robbed of the physical ability to do so. The man who contributed the iconic drum roll to “In the Air Tonight” will no longer be able to render it live, if and when he does any concerts again. Its equivalent would be Pete Townshend losing an arm and not being able to do a windmill again, or the lead singer of Train losing his voice (okay, that last one wouldn’t be a tragedy…I kid. But no, really, not losing sleep over that).

It turns out that Collins has something that he’s interested in (as drumming was something he loved): the Alamo. The guy has a serious Texas-sized collection of artifacts from the battle and an abiding interest in the last stand that has come to define the Lonestar State. It’s not a connection you’d make (English drummer for Eighties band develops interest in heroic chapter of American history), but in light of his diagnosis it makes sense. I’m not a trained psychologist, but I did read the article and understand that the author was going for the easy “last stand of Phil Collins” angle. I have to admit, it is pretty attractive to jump to that conclusion. Of course, every solider serving in the Alamo died in the battle (Davy Crockett may have been killed by the Mexican army afterwards, as it turns out, but he still stands iconic as one of the last to fall, facts be damned). So I worry a little about Phil’s mental state.

Of course, I’ve been avoiding the obvious question I’m sure anyone is reading this is asking: why the hell do I have Phil Collins on my iPod? Well, like a lot of things it’s because of a girl. I was gently teasing someone I kinda like about the Bald One when she said that she liked his work, and I thought about how, when I was a kid and I didn’t have music-snob tendencies just yet, I like him too, especially the “Land of Confusion” video where the ugly puppets of world leaders at the time all did silly things. It was the Eighties, you could have ugly puppets in your video. No one was going to confuse Phil with the guys of Motley Crue or heartthrobs like Corey “Sunglasses at Night” Hart. Anyway, I was at Best Buy and Genesis’ “best of” was just sitting there, looking forlorn and unloved. So I figured what the hell, it’s marked down to under ten dollars, and I can appreciate the cheesiness of the not-that-good songs (as it turned out, a lot of them weren’t that good, or at least I’ve not gone back to them much the few times I’ve listened to Genesis), and kick out the jams to the songs I remembered well. And yeah, I might cringe a little when I think about someone reading this and saying “you like Phil Collins?” in that snide, dismissive way I used to have when someone told me that they like the Eagles, Celine Dion, or Ratt. But you know what? They can get over it. Snobs are lonely, bitter people, and I’m tired of being one.

I’ll be damned if I ever buy a Creed CD, though…

Tinker Tailor Soldier Swamp Person

Taking a break from the songs-inspiring-blog-posts fever I'm in (it's more fun than swinging a bag of kittens around, though not for the kittens) just to say how nice it is that, even with the local libraries closed for the holiday weekend (National Frog-Catching Day...or Memorial Day, one of the two), I can still roll down to my former stomping grounds of Clemson's Cooper Library for a few hours and spend some quality time online wondering why no one has written anything on my wall for hours.

I mean, come on people...it's Facebook. That's what you do.

And I parked downtown, which means I have a nice hike ahead of me, but I'm cool with that because I'm parked in the parking garage downtown, which means I have plenty of time to make it back...and plenty of time to discover the damage from someone sideswiping me...or breaking into my car and stealing it...oh god, did I remember to lock it? I gotta go!

Nah, I'm sure it will be fine...unless it isn't...why  did I have to park so far away? And why hasn't anyone said anything on my wall on Facebook?

Oh, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the bomb-diggity of spy movies, finally saw it last night and loved it. I'm anxious to see if The Honourable Schoolboy is just around the corner. Check it out!

Now, about the graffiti on my car left by the clever French thief and rapscallion Jean-Marie Salamandier....

Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa at Three in the Morning

It’s a lazy argument to make, one born of cynicism and perhaps too much exposure to Top Forty radio these days: there is no good music being made anymore, nothing that will stand the test of time quite as well as whatever we remember from our youths (and that music depends on your particular youth. For my mother, it’s Lynyrd Skynyrd; for me, it’s Weezer, Radiohead, and R.E.M.). Sure, there’s always a surplus of indie rock bands plying their trade, you might say, but none of them will reach the heights of whoever it is that you remember as being examples of “good” music when you were first becoming aware of the distinction between good and bad music.

I have been guilty of that fallacy myself, and I know from experience how wrong it is, and how wrongheaded it is too. Vampire Weekend probably won’t merit a multi-hour documentary about their artistic legacy when all is said and done, but for the purposes of giving me something to listen to other than whatever’s on the radio, they’ll do quite nicely.

And while I’m snidely dismissing the radio in the previous sentence, allow me to fold a little and admit that, yes, there is good music on the radio now, but it’s played to death by programmers and disc jockeys too lazy to try and mix it up. Thanks to the fact that most radio stations are owned by a few corporations, what’s good for the bottom line isn’t always good for the listener. Adele is fantastic, I love her voice, but if I have to hear “Someone Like You” every hour on the hour for much longer I might just storm the nearest clock tower and hurl verbal abuse upon all below (violence never solves anything, and I don’t know how to shoot a gun nor do I want to learn how to anyway. People I’ve known who collect guns are a little out there, even for me).

So, good new music; it exists. Vampire Weekend is proof of that, even if they never follow up their first two albums with anything substantial. “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” has a shout-out to Peter Gabriel, the immortal line “do you wanna fuck/like you know I do,” and a video that manages to remind me of “Teen Wolf” and just about any mid-Eighties movie “party scene” (in the horror movies, the parties end in multiple decapitations; in the comedies, misunderstood advances and crossed signals, which can be almost as painful as decapitations). I saw the video one night at a buddy’s apartment on campus, where I was in the midst of a drunken tear through pop culture (I believe I had quite an amount of verbal abuse to heap upon the hapless makers of “Beerfest,” though I think drunk or sober it’s an unwatchable train wreck of a film). MTV2, which sold itself as “the alternative to MTV”  in the sense that it showed videos instead of reality shows, was running the “Cape Cod” video, and I was stopped in my tracks from mocking it. I liked it, I really really liked it.

I’m prone to bouts of cynicism, indeed full-on meanness, and when it comes to popular culture I tend to be really cynical. In a world where three-fourths of the original Ramones line-up is dead and gone yet the Eagles remain alive and well, a world where the Kardashians are celebrities simply for being celebrities (or for being related to a sex-video star), a world where Howie Mandel can have a say in whether someone’s dreams of Vegas stardom can come true, I don’t think you can blame me too much for being cynical about good stuff being out there. Music has always been my passion, especially as I’m one of those lucky many who have no business trying to make it; karaoke night is the closet I’ll ever get to starring at Carnegie Hall, and I’m pretty sure that idea I had about a rock opera set during the Battle of Britain (but involving aliens who teach us all to love one another, before luring us to our collective doom) is best left on the drawing board of my mind.

I’m envious of musicians; I’m envious of the guys in Vampire Weekend, envious of their Members Only jackets in the video, envious of the cool guitar that the lead guy (who has the non-rock star name Ezra, of all things; Ezra is great for a poet, as the mother of Ezra Pound could concur) plays in the video and onstage the few times I’ve seen them live on TV (or pre-taped performing live on TV). I grew up not with MTV but with “Friday Night Videos” (I think it was Friday nights, I could be mistaken), which was when NBC would devote a whole hour (or half-hour) to music videos in the early Nineties (or maybe the late Eighties…whatever). The important thing is, when I thought of musicians, I couldn’t separate the visual presentation from the actual music. When I thought of R.E.M., I saw Michael Stipe pacing the floor in the “Losing My Religion” video, for instance. Gradually, I developed an admiration for artists whose videos might not get regular rotation if they made videos at all, but part of me still loves a clever or at least well-executed music video, and “Cape Cod,” drunk as I was, was clever the first time I saw it, and each time it subsequently aired that night, in between drunken rants at “Beerfest” (I have it on good authority that I threw an actual beer towards the TV during the movie, though I don’t recall if such a thing occurred). Perhaps it doesn’t hold up whenever I’m sober now (and rest assured, when I watch anything on TV now I do so sober; it’s been a while since I had a drink and I’d like to keep it that way). But I still like Vampire Weekend, and I still think (however passing their artistry may be) they’re a pretty good example to cite when people who are too young to be cynical say there’s no good music anymore.

You might have to be drunk at three in the morning to find it, but it’s there.