It's no secret that what was idealized was never actually realized. Something happened along the way. We took a wrong turn or forgot where we wanted to go, and now the society we live in - a violent, impulsive, image-obsessed world where ad execs are our philosophers and our artists and innovators are the ones programming our computers much more often than they are anyone using them - doesn't quite live up to even the most bare bone dream of the Baby Boom generation. It may have been inevitable, may have from the beginning been more of a delusion than a dream, but the let down, the extent of it, surely wasn't anticipated, and the fact that it happened almost entirely within the span of my life, haunts me a little.
The Pretender is very 70s - its mellow piano, vaguely disco rhythms and thick-shouldered orchestral accompaniment are unique musical artifacts of that time period. I really like the sound, but the song's genius, I think (that which supports my earlier assertion that Jackson Browne is to the 70s what Bob Dylan was to the 60s) is found in the sublimely illustrative lyrics, which paint an anguished portrait of an exhausted America, right at the critical crossroads of the post-Watergate era.
If Browne had written this song in 1986, or 1996, after the fact, when his generation had already reached middle age, when their music was already being called 'classic rock', John Lennon was already gone and it was obvious there remained no hope whatsoever that even a faint blip of 60s idealism had not been swallowed up by the cynicism, consumerism and commercialism that had once been thought (naively) to be conquerable, it wouldn't have meant nearly as much. But in 1976, this was pretty damn prescient. Browne predicted, and lamented, the replacement of 'hippie' ideals with yuppie ideals - and all that it would mean for us, as individuals and a society - years before it really got underway.
I'm gonna be a happy idiot, and struggle for the legal tender / where the ads take aim, and lay their claim, to the heart and the soul of the spender / and believe in whatever may lie, in the things that money can buy...
Are you there, Browne sings, as the bass gently wrings an exquisite despair worthy of the 1970s right out of the air (listen for it), say a prayer, for the pretender.
And I love the cover of the album. In myriad ways intentional or otherwise, it too is an accurate portrayal of the 1970s.
"And the children solemnly wait for the ice cream vendor..."
#122) "Little Man" by Alan Jackson - A kind of thematic cousin to The Pretender, Alan Jackson's Little Man concerns itself with the vanishing American downtown, how 'Mom and Pop' has been snuffed out by big business in every form, from the grocery store to gas station, bookstore to the candy shop. How specialization has given way to one stop shopping, stadium-sized department stores where you can buy motor oil in one aisle and bed spreads in the next, and a six foot TV on the end cap. And don't forget candy for the kids, and grandma's pills, and her Echinacea, and the latest copy of People, and milk, cereal and ground beef, bleach, window cleaner and trash bags, diapers, fishing lures and a betta for little Jimmy, he really wants one...
It's a nice thought, a stellar rumination for Sunday afternoon, surely, to lament how impersonally (and overwhelmingly) global and corporate the world's become even in its most remote, far-flung corners...and it's completely true. I witnessed the demise of the little man first-hand, growing up. My parents owned a bookstore throughout the 1970s, a 'Mom and Pop' concern that even then was on borrowed time. My parents did some things to keep it afloat, tried to diversify. They sold art supplies, had candy and video games in one corner for the local school kids, even made homemade fudge for a while.,.but it didn't last too long into the 1980s, and the reason was simple. Even before huge bookstores came along selling more coffee than books, before anyone could imagine ordering something on a computer (or knew anything about computers), and long before the veritable witchcraft of Kindle, my dad explained it: The day the big department store at the edge of town started selling the Top 10 best sellers was the beginning of the end.
But there's another side to this saga. Yes, something has been lost in the last forty years as small towns have been slowly absorbed into the global economy - a sense of community, a sense of purpose and place, a certain identity. But the truth is that Wal-Mart is as much the great equalizer as it is the killer of downtown, structured to benefit everyone who once called downtown home. Wal-Mart stores typically have a regional (rather than local) reach, and can therefore provide more jobs and more hours...better pay, holiday pay, benefits, et cetera. Mom and Pop simply could not do this. Moreover, Wal-Mart's business model enables it to (truly) offer the lowest prices, and as there are other big box chains to contend with, an element of competition arises that didn't exist in days past. Before 'big box', the sad truth was that if you lived in an isolated small town, you paid whatever the 'little man' wanted to charge you, and endured significantly less selection.
And as for customer service? Well, I think the notion of the unconcerned Wal-Mart worker roaming the aisles like a zombie and providing no help or answers of any kind is a myth. If anything, the opposite is true. Wal-Mart generally goes out of its way to train its employees well, not only so that they're knowledgeable (sorry, but I've never received an inadequate response to a question in the electronics or garden department of Wal-Mart...), but also so they properly engage the customer. Some are better than others at this song and dance, of course, but it's at the Mom and Pop places that I have gotten hit with indifference - sometimes hostility - from the help. The various Wal-Mart department workers have answers. The Wal-Mart exit greeters flash me a smile and a 'hello' when I come in and when I leave, because they're trained to do so.
The worker at the dusty little store downtown looks up from his magazine and scowls at me for disturbing him. And think about it: it's the same "local" person working at both locations.
I think on balance the consumer and worker alike have benefited from the Wal Mart-ization of America,
"New store came where you do it yourself, you buy a lotto ticket and food off the shelf / forget the little man...forget about that little man..."
#123) "Summertime Blues" by Blue Cheer - When my brother and I were kids, we thought this was the funniest song, and Blue Cheer the funniest band, with the drummer's hair hanging in his eyes, completely obscuring his face as he ruthlessly punished his drums. I remember, we jokingly called him Cousin It, from the Addams Family, and I remember being as excited as I was amused by the band's look and sound. They were the embodiment of youth and rebellion to me from about 7th grade on, even though they came a full generation before. In the winter of '87, I actually got a little crap from classmates for digging Blue Cheer.
I don't know why. They are crazy good. I still think their version of Summertime Blues is a great - as in fucking awesome - interpretation of the Eddie Cochran original. Check out the drumming! Turns out 'Cousin It' really is a monster. :-)
Everything about this band was monster, really. Their whole album Vincebus Eruptum is fantastic. And I'm not the only one who thinks so.
"I done told my congressman and he said, quote, 'dig this, boy...'
