Otis Redding, "Try a Little Tenderness"

I'd love to say that I came across this song on the radio, or just on one of the many Otis Redding best-of CDs, but most likely I discovered this song the same way a lot of you did, if you're a child of the Eighties. That penultimate scene in Pretty In Pink, when Jon Cryer's Duckie is lip-synching to the last part while subsequently having a grand mal seizure in the record store where his lady love Molly Ringwald works? Yep, that was where I first heard this tune.

I've gone on a little bit about cultural appropriation in some of theses, but I'll say it again: white folks be stealing from the brothers. Actually, though, in this case Redding wasn't the original author of the song (it's from the early Thirties, and according to Wikipedia Bing Crosby took a turn at it, though it's safe to say his probably sounds nothing like Otis's). Hell, I heard it as an orchestral version at the beginning of Dr. Strangelove and wondered if I was hearing what I thought I was hearing. Otis Redding, of course, made the song his own.

Otis Redding is one of those guys who really, honestly, should have been around a lot longer. In the rock world, burning out before your time is up can be a good thing (as anyone who's had to endure a Sting solo record would attest...sorry, but it's just never gonna measure up to the Police), but some people really do depart way too soon, under incredibly tragic circumstances. I recently read Respect Yourself by Robert Gordon, a fantastic history of Stax Records, and Otis is a big presence in the early part of the book. I did not know, for instance, that when he auditioned for the record label he was the chauffeur for another singer who was auditioning that day, and on a whim he tried out his vocal chops. Think how differently music would have been had Otis not stepped up to the microphone that day.

His death in December 1967 (in a plane crash, along with most of the original members of the Bar-Keys) is reminiscent of Buddy Holly's crash almost a decade earlier. Both were stars on the rise, young and dynamic and ready to conquer the world. In rock-star terms, they were Icarus flying too close to the sun literally (or at least the crash of a comet that burned really bright for a short period of time). I was surprised when I learned that Otis was only twenty-six when he died; he always came across as older in his photos and on record. An old soul, perhaps.

Otis's death forever changed Stax, they managed to redefine themselves with Isaac Hayes stepping out from behind the producer's booth to become a recording star. The label thrived and then came crashing down (no doubt a fall fueled by resentment about the perception of it being black-owned in the mostly white Memphis business community). Stax fell itself, less than a decade after Otis Redding's last hurrah, but it's back. And the story of the label in its first incarnation is an amazing one, worth seeking out if you're a fan. It might have actually helped Otis more than hurt to have one of his signature covers (the other being his frantic take on the Stones' "Satisfaction") be associated with a skinny white dude in a John Hughes film, even if in the end Duckie does not get the girl (grand romantic gestures sometimes work, sometimes fail, but this one at least was memorable). In a lot of ways, the slow build of the song connects it to other slow-building songs, especially "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin. Now, to me, the idea of "Stairway" being a classic rock song is ridiculous, and based solely on the release of the last few minutes of the song. The slow build makes the song torture for me, and I don't think it's a good song anyway. But "Try a Little Tenderness" works because of the slow build, it eases you into the eventual unleashing of Redding's soulful power. It's a fucking classic, I guess I'm saying.

I read an essay by Jonathan Lethem in which he described how Redding was studying the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album in his last months, trying to achieve something like that with his version of rock music (labeled "soul" because you can't just have music without genres, apparently). His posthumous hit "Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay" is suggestive of the direction he was going to go, had he lived. It's a loss that is assuaged somewhat by what we do have.

Nirvana, "The Man Who Sold the World"

To paraphrase Chuck D, Kurt Cobain didn't mean shit to me. Now that's not to be taken as "I didn't like him as a person and I'm glad he's been dead for twenty years," but at the time of his death I was less than grieved at his demise. Perhaps I was just heartless at fourteen.

Truth of the matter is, when Nirvana broke big I was young and not as passionate about music as I would later be, thanks to the Beatles. And while I liked the occasional Nirvana tune, I didn't get into them like a lot of my peers. Indeed, it took me ten years to get around to buying a copy of Nevermind, and that one didn't exactly take up a permanent home in my CD collection (in fact it has long since been sold). I did get around to reading books about the band (Michael Azerrad's great Nirvana bio Come As You Are, Christopher Cross's bio of Cobain), but the fact is that I just don't care that much about Nirvana.

In much the same way that I feel about the Godfather movies, I acknowledge the importance of Nirvana to the pop-music landscape without necessarily being a fan of theirs, even on a casual basis. I like the Foo Fighters all right, and some of Nirvana's songs are pretty good. But I never drank the Kool-Aid that the band were "our generation's Beatles" (whosever generation that was, it probably wasn't mine). I am sad that Cobain felt like he had to end his life. But do I think we missed out on more of that kickin' Nirvana sound? Meh, probably not.

Like I said, it's been twenty years since he died, and somewhat predictably I'm being told by the various entertainment conglomerates that I should mark the occasion by purchasing magazines or books about the main man of Nirvana (much in the same way that the Beatles' fifty-year anniversary of appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show saw a surplus of books and magazines marking the occasion). I don't behoove anyone making money off this anniversary, I just feel less than willing to part with my money in order to fuel it.

In his first book, Rob Sheffield talked about how, the weekend Kurt's body was found, he and his friends talked about how they weren't surprised Cobain had ended his life, and how they even had fun at his expense. It's probably a coping mechanism to deal with sad things by using humor, I've done it myself for sure. Kurt Cobain was a fellow human being who, as it turned out, wasn't that psyched about being famous, and his pain was real. But asking us to mourn him anew twenty years on, so you can sell some cheap book or magazine or t-shirt with the man's face plastered on it and nothing new about why his music might have mattered to some people? I'm good, thanks.

Nirvana will never be one of my favorite bands, or even one of my "they're alright" bands. I'll take a pass on remarking on what Cobain's passing means to me because (as it turns out) it doesn't mean that much to me personally. Oh sure, we could talk about the absence of a similarly large presence in alternative rock since his death (that's a legitimate topic of conversation), but truth be told, his music didn't mean that much to me at the time or even now. He entertained me, I'm sure, but did he mean anything to me? Signs point to "no."

Grad School-Bound, Baby!

On Monday, I left work early to go get some work done on my car, and after that I figured "what the hell, let's go by the library in Walhalla." I should emphasize that I left work with about an hour left to go, and it was past closing time when my car was ready after being fixed (just in case you're asking yourself "why didn't the lazy bastard go back to work?").

Anyway, I checked my email and there in my inbox was something from Clemson's graduate-school folks in the English department. Figuring it was a fifty-fifty shot (either I got in or I didn't), I opened the email and began to read. When I got to the first line, about how "pleased" they were to offer me an assistantship for the fall 2014 semester, I guess I could quit looking through my fingers at the email.

Yes, your hero got in, and I was offered an assistantship as well (meaning I get to teach classes or some other such things as the English department so desires of me, with a stipend and with tuition waived for the time being). You could say I was pretty darn happy with that.

All of this occurred on St. Patty's Day, so naturally it is now the best St. Patty's day ever (and I wore green to avoid getting pinched, though at this point I'm thirty-four-years-old and I'm guessing the likelihood of me running into people who still pinch others for not wearing green is pretty slim. Still, better safe than sorry).

I'm pretty stoked as well as terrified about the whole thing, truth be told. It's high on the list of "best things that ever happened to me so far." It's still sinking in, and I'm wondering now if I have what it takes for grad school. Specifically, if I can master the "too lazy to shave" stubble-beard of many a grad student I've known in the past, the carefully cultivated look of appearing not to care how I'm groomed. I kid, but it's really something pretty awesome (grad school, not facial hair).

I just hope the good people at Clemson know what they're getting themselves into by letting me back into their school.

Roger Miller, "King Of the Road"

A couple of weeks ago, Jake went missing from our home, and we feared the worst. He turned up a couple of days later, literally (I turned on the light overlooking his designated sleeping area on my porch just on instinct that Friday morning and there he was, like nothing had ever happened). But of course the thought that came to mind was that Jake had gone off to the woods or somewhere remote to die.

Jake, just for clarification, is our dog, or really my grandpa's dog. He's been with our family (first with my uncle, then with my grandparents) for at least twenty years. I'm not sure what that amounts to in dog years, but my guess is (from the reactions of people to whom I discussed his absence from our abode) it must be pretty ancient. Jake is back at home now, but it's safe to say that his time on this planet might not run much longer.

I am great with other peoples' pets (as well as their children) for the simple fact that I'm not the primary caregiver, By and large, I can get by with a stroke to comfort here (for the pets...don't get the wrong idea, people) or a well-placed gesture to elicit laughter or a smile from the children. Anything more than that (feeding the pets or changing the diapers of the children, just to pull two examples) is asking a bit much of me. I don't do well with poop, even when it's my own.

Thing is, I feel sometimes like I'm a little detached from ordinary life, from the lives of my peers on Facebook (the ones my age or younger who already have a decade or more of experience at parenting or pet-loving). I didn't have a girlfriend in high school, not even a "pity fuck" that could've resulted in an unwanted pregnancy and thus a life of drudgery to support said child by working a bunch of dead-end jobs. Oh, I've worked the dead-end jobs, it was just my lazy ass I had to support. Compared to some of my high-school chums (not any of the ones I'm friends with on Facebook), I got off easy.

But one byproduct of this luck has been some loneliness at times, reaching out for the wrong girl when I thought I couldn't do any better. The flip side is the insecurity that sees me pass up the chance I might have with not the "right" girl, but with the "right girl right now" maybe, because I have such a stellar record behind me to suggest that when it comes to this whole love thing, I'm a bit of a fuck-up. I think this is reflected in some of the relationships I have not just with romantic interests but with simple good-old-fashioned friends. There's a distance there that I sometimes put up, to keep from getting too involved. To keep from getting hurt, perhaps.

But hurt, as I'm quite aware of now, passes. It's been a little less than a year since I got hurt bad, and I guess it would behoove me to risk getting hurt again, if only to avoid a fate worse than the one I thought I avoided by not getting it on in high school: the fate where it's just you in a room, with no one around to share the room or your life with.

Jake is back, probably not for long (like I said, he's the Methuselah of dogs), but I'll try to pay more attention to him and enjoy his company until that day he really does go off to die. Maybe between work and home and work and home, I can find time for something more again. I'm a man of means by no means, as the song goes, but I get by. Maybe it's time to stop just getting by.

Arcade Fire, "Haiti"

So, after the high-wire stress intensity of getting ready for the GRE, having the GRE delayed by weather, getting the GRE set up again, driving to Greenville to make sure I could get to the testing site, going to the testing site, taking the test, and getting out of there so I could go home and take a nap...

Now...we wait.

Thing is, I already know how I did on the test (fantastic on the reading, borderline on the math, which is kinda what I expected). I just don't know if that's good enough for Clemson. I guess this post should be about Tom Petty's "The Waiting Is the Hardest Part," but I thought that was a little on-the-nose. Plus, it occurred to me that I've never done a song post about the band whose actual name is in the title of this blog.

And I am nothing if not aware of said irony and its need to be addressed.

Plus, I need to address the post-test-taking spell that occurs, the grey limbo that comes not with not knowing how you did but with not knowing how the people you're hoping to impress into either giving you a job or more education are feeling about how you did.

It's great in that I got it over with and can now resume guilt-free reading of books that do not have "GRE" in the title unless it's "great," "gretzky," or "gregarious." The only such book I've read that falls into that category is a very good book about The Great Gatsby. I feel some relief that I can go into a library or bookstore now and look at the books without thinking "shit, I should really be focusing on studying for the GRE now." Truth be told, after the delay from my first test day thanks to snow, it was hard to open those books back up. It didn't feel like anything I hadn't read the first time around would stick any better the second or third (and I read those books, the math sections at least, like a readin' fiend). If I have to retake it, I'll review the hell out of the math sections (including actually performing some of the example problems, something that I should've done the first time around). But I was burnt out after stressing out over the test the few weeks that the first test date came around in, at the end of January. Truth be told, I might've done worse if I hadn't had the down time to think about it, to think about why I wanted to go to grad school, and to field all the questions from relatives and associates as to why I wanted to go back to grad school.

Now to Arcade Fire: the reason why I say they "saved" my life is not because Win Butler and the gang kept my school bus from going over a cliff into the valley gorge below (though that would make a cool story) but because when I got their 2007 album The Neon Bible, I was in a funk that wasn't fun. I wasn't cutting myself or driving recklessly to end it all or anything, but I felt like anything could happen and I'd be okay with it. But as dark and depressing as some of that album undoubtedly is (it wouldn't have been Arcade Fire), it gave me some reason to stop feeling miserable, and to pick my head up off the ground. The Virginia Tech shooting happened while I was in a funk, and that too helped to lift me out of it because I realized how the dreams of those victims who died as a result of some loser with an arsenal and a twisted agenda would never be realized. Also, around this time a kid who was going to be part of our family killed himself before a wedding. A month later, my friend Travis committed suicide. Out the window went the concept of suicide as "an artistic statement."

Life is too damn short to worry over some of the things we worry about, like money or popularity or whatever the hell it is that drives people. If money bought you happiness, would Donald Trump be such a miserable fucker? "Haiti" is the song by AF from their first album that is sung by Rene Chassagne, who is of Haitian descent. It predates the epic catastrophe that befell the island in 2010, when an earthquake destroyed much of the country and led to a humanitarian crisis which is still very much part of the story. It's an ode to loss, though, I think. It's a beautiful song, and one that I wouldn't have discovered if I'd never been in the funk that had led me to Arcade Fire in the first place. Maybe that's why I avoided writing about them for so long; it hit too close to home.

At any rate, I hope I get into grad school for the fall, but if I don't I can always try for spring of next year. And if even then, I can try my hand at something else. Yoda was wrong about the "do or not do, there is no try." There is always a "try," sometimes it's hard to do that though. I tried with the GRE and now I await whether my try was good enough for somebody else. But it was good enough for me.

Velvet Underground, "Rock and Roll"

Today is my little brother's birthday, he's twenty-four years old. Makes me feel old already. My sis will be twenty-six in a couple of weeks. Makes me feel older. So shout out to my brother at the top.

Also, today is what would've been Lou Reed's seventy-second birthday. As you no doubt know, the man passed away last year (not too long ago, right around Halloween), and I miss him. No, I never met him personally nor do I claim any special kinship with him, having never done drugs, homosexual/transvestite sex acts, nor led a band that changed what popular music could address subject-wise or sonically. But I loved the man's art.

Tonight the Academy Awards air and, though I've not seen any of the films nominated (not much of anything new anyway, except for the new "Muppet Movie" when it came out on DVD two years ago), I do like to watch because anything that turns a celebration of the arts into a competition is compelling and watchable. Plus, I'm a fan of the "dead reel," the annual look back at who we've lost in the particular field that the awards show highlights. It's not morbid, just something that I think reflects well on our now-is-now culture, our self-obsession with the notion that anything worthwhile has been done in the past twenty years and that history is just a backdrop to our own navel-gazing, Twitter-obsessed present-day. One would hope that, had they had Twitter or other social media in their day, historic figures in the arts like F. Scott Fitzgerald or Homer wouldn't have wasted precious time that could be spent writing or drinking by getting into "tweet wars" with anonymous hacks.

One would hope, anyway.

We've lost some big ones this past year, including the most recent big loss of last week, Harold Ramis. They'll all get their due this night, in the form of a clip of them at work, with their name and what they were best known for. And some muted applause, though some will get more than others (I'm guessing Philip Seymour Hoffman will get some prolonged applause, as well he should). The dead reel is a great thing about the Oscars and other awards shows that I hope we don't lose in our me-first, this-is-now and the-past-is-just-our-prologue present. It's not the highlight of any Oscar broadcast, but a moment to remember what we've lost. It's a public memorial squeezed into the free minutes towards the end of a self-congratulatory excess, and I like it that way.

Hindu Love Gods, "Raspberry Beret"

I'm willing to bet that, while a lot of you imaginary people out there who potentially read this thing know the song, you don't know the artists. The song, of course, is a classic from the Purple One (AKA Prince), and during the holiday season I read a very good short book by Toure about how Prince's music came about and what it might mean. I won't spoil the book for you, seek it out for yourself if you're a fan (title: I Would Die 4 U).

The artists in this case are much more well known to you if you're a fan of alternative rock: Warren Zevon and the musicians from R.E.M. (Michael Mills, Peter Buck, and Bill Berry). The Hindu Love Gods were one of those one-shot collaborations that occasionally occur in music history, where an older artist (Zevon) beloved by the younger musicians (R.E.M.) stretches his musical muscles, in this case on a cover of a then-contemporary song. It came across my radar because of a Zevon best-of that had the song alongside The One Song That Anyone Knows Warren Zevon For. That's right, "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner."

This does give me a chance to revisit two musical acts I admire (if not downright love in the case of R.E.M.). Zevon was always that guy whose two seconds of "Werewolves of London" jazzed up an otherwise predictable stream of easy-listening hits from the Seventies on the commercials that used to air late at night for CD collections of...well, wouldn't you know, "easy-listening hits of the Seventies!" The concept of such collections has been rendered almost moot by iTunes and other song-sharing software, and the oft-repeated phrase in said commercials about "wanting one song by the artist, but not wanting to buy the whole album" always struck me as being a musical pussy of sorts (why not? Some of my favorite songs are album-only filler by some artists, stuff that wouldn't even be available on a second rate best-of unless it was imported from the former Yugoslavia or something).

Then again, some artists were only as good as one song; it's kinda painful to think what an entire album of Wang Chung might sound like, if you really just wanted that one song of theirs (well, and the other one, "Dance Hall Days"). One-hit wonders are usually that for a reason, and the implication was from the commercial that Zevon was in the same league as Dr. Demento, a novelty act of dubious merit.

But Zevon, of course for those who know, isn't one song, or even ten. The best-of I got (Genius) makes me consider him one of the unheralded geniuses of American pop songwriting, and I don't mean that in a bad way. Zevon wrote some incredible songs, and in this cover of a Prince song that ain't too shabby in its original form, he tips his hat to the Once and Future "Formerly Known As" One with a rocking version that might not live up to the original, but is fantastic in its own way. Covers are dicey: either you hew too closely and lose the chance to find the song underneath the original artist, or you fuck up what was great about the song in the first place and lose your way. Some covers that work, off the top of my head:

Otis Redding, "Satisfaction"
Talking Heads, "Take Me To the River"
R.E.M., "Toys In the Attic"
Nirvana "The Man Who Sold the World"
Modern Lovers, "Foggy Notion"
Devo, "Satisfaction"

And there are more, of course, songs that were so good the first time that you don't mind hearing them again if they're done right. The Hindu Love Gods did right by Prince on this one, in my humble opinion. You should seek it out now if you have the time.