Wings For Wheels

So I’m getting incredibly psyched for The Gaslight Anthem’s show on Friday. I was dangerously cranking them up on Saturday as I was walking around town. But for all the great songs on The ‘59 Sound, I think my favorite song of theirs is on their first album, Sink Or Swim. It’s a tribute to Joe Strummer called I’da Called You Woody, Joe.

And then I heard it like a shot through my skull to my brain,
I felt my fingertips tingle and it started to rain,
When the walls of my bedroom were tremblin’ around me,
His ramshackle voice over attack of a bluebeat,
Tellin’ me he’s only looking for fun.
This was the sound of the very last gang in town.

That makes me need to hear White Man In Hammersmith Palais.

As long as I’m jonesing (pun intended) on The Clash, how about a live clip of Janie Jones?

But getting back to The Gaslight Anthem, frontman Brian Fallon takes it one step further in the chorus:

As heard by my wild young heart, like directions on a cold dark night,
Sayin’, ‘Let it out, let it out, let it out, you’re doin’ all right.’
And I heard it in his chain gang soul.
That it wasn’t just the same sad song.
Saying, ‘Let it out, let it out, let it out, you’re doin’ all right.’

Has there ever been a better description of hearing a sound that changed your life? The Clash didn’t hit me until later in life (growing up I only knew the Combat Rock singles, not even Train In Vain), but those words could have easily applied to my discovery of Bruce Springsteen, The Who, and The Replacements. Fallon beautifully describes why we connect with music in a way unlike with any other art form, because is reminds us that we’re not alone, even when there’s nobody around.

And this doesn’t apply only to us music geek elitist snob types. Ten days ago, Jeff wrote a brilliant editorial on Popdose about this, using the much-maligned group The Fray as evidence.

I was halfway through writing this piece when I flew out to Arizona to be a part of my younger brother’s wedding. Imagine my surprise when the bride and groom danced their first dance to a Fray song (”Look After You”). At first, I wasn’t even thinking about my editorial; I was too overcome with surprise that someone who shares my DNA would decide to kick off his wedded life with something by a C+ pop outfit like this one. And then all of a sudden I fucking got choked up and I finally, totally understood the peculiar genius inherent in this type of music: It’s designed to make you feel like your whole life is a wedding reception, or a funeral, or anything more meaningful than whatever it is you’re doing in your cubicle right now.

I had been looking for a context to link to this for a while, but it wasn’t until just now that I came up with one. Then again, if you’re not reading Popdose on a daily basis, why bother coming here? But Jeff’s column hit me pretty strong. Years ago I stopped caring about why crappy acts were topping the charts and winning awards while bands I liked lingered in obscurity. My connection with the music I love is deeply personal. If others have the same reaction, great. If not, I don’t let it bother me any more.

Life’s too short to get upset over the latest boy band, untalented hot chick singer, or mediocre rock band. Acts like those have been around for ages, just with different names (are The Fray the new Hootie?) and in a few years they’ll be forgotten by their biggest fans. Meanwhile, people will be listening to The Beatles, George Gershwin and Mozart until Al Gore’s vision of an environmental apocolypse comes true.

The only I can do to change all that is once in a while throw up a post on my little blog here in the hopes that a) my friends and regular readers draw the same conclusions, and b) people searching for good music stumble across WFW and become part of a community.

When Pete Townshend adapted Tommy for Broadway, he realized that he had to write a proper ending, which he hadn’t done in the original. In an interview, he said that he had to leave things ambiguous, because the one thing you don’t want to do in rock is make up people’s minds for them. But theatre has a different aesthetic, and so he created an ending that reflected where he was at that point in time and pissed off a lot of old Who fans in the process.

Although it probably contradicted something he previously said, Townshend was right. We shouldn’t look to musicians for the answers. That’s been the mistake of rock fans since Bob Dylan asked how it feels to be on your own. The point is to meet people who are asking the same questions, and together we try to find the answers. A song like Unsatisfied doesn’t cure your problems by itself, but you go and see The Replacements, and quickly realize that everybody in the crowd looks like you, and you no longer feel you’re in it alone. That’s what Fallon is getting at in the song – let it out, let it out, let it out, you’re doing all right.

The only problem with that theory, as it pertains to us music geek elitist snob types, is that most of us are fucked-up loners who try to avoid eye contact with everybody. I remember a guy I used to see at a lot of shows in the mid-90s. I’m guessing that, like me, he also worked in a record store in the DC area and used his label reps to get tickets because he didn’t look like he could afford it, either. But even though we obviously had similar taste in music and were by ourselves, I never introduced myself even though we could have become great friends, or maybe he was also a musician and we could have formed a band. And obviously he was the same way because he never approached me (I think we once nodded in recognition from across the front row of the 9:30 Club). Very strange, as Sir Paul once sang.

The reason I love bands like The Gaslight Anthem (and The Hold Steady, The Drive-By Truckers, and Marah) is that they live off that same belief that fueled the best rock of the 60s and 70s: that nothing can bring a group of fucked-up loners together better than a power chord and a gallon of sweat.