It’s around the 21-mile mark when your mind starts playing tricks. “Only 5 miles left” you tell yourself. You’ve run 5 miles plenty of times during your marathon training. No problem. It’s then your body reminds you that those training runs of 5 miles were not preceded by 3 hours of running.
I’m wondering if this is how a band feels with 2 weeks left of a 6-month tour.
Following tonight’s show I am meeting up with my bandmates, walking a few blocks down the road from my house, and playing a mini-set with the band, between sets at a private party by our friends The Donuts (featuring the Hall’s very own cdm and at least one other occasional participant in our weekly chatter). I am really looking forward to this, even though I’m a bit terrified at being, for tonight, the lone guitarist in our band. We rehearsed our mini-set on Thursday night, then pulled a bunch of ancient songs out of the hat, just to see if we could still remember the chords and get through them in more or less one piece. Man, that was fun. Man, that was the right way to celebrate the fact that we keep on rolling. May you roll on as well!
Traveling through time and space…the orange singles box!
I don’t know about you, but as righteous a practice as I know it is, I’ve never been obsessive about flipping a 45 over and checking out the B-side. Part of it may be my Darwinian leanings. Why should I get too worked up about “sloppy seconds?” Part of it may be because I like to act cool and later be surprised. Eventually I will get around to checking out the B-side, even it it takes me 40-some years, as was the case this past week.
While completing the digital transfer of the plastic orange singles box I’ve dragged through time and space, I decided to burn a lot of the B-sides as well as the better-loved sides. In some cases, I aborted the burn in mid-song. The B-side to “The Hustle,” for instance, was the lowest form of disco-era clock punching ever put to tape. “The A-side is going to buy us some swimming pools,” I imagined Van McCoy saying to his session players, “the B-side can skim for bugs and leaves!” I forget the name of the B-side. It was so bad it wasn’t even funny.
There are singles I’ve bought by favorite artists in their prime that I couldn’t wait to flip over: Elvis Costello & the Attractions‘ singles from my teenage years, for instance, always delivered the goods. The flipside of Dave Edmunds‘ version of “Girls Talk,” the Graham Parker-penned “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” is another one I couldn’t wait to hear—for good reason, as it turned out.
Then there are singles I’ve bought specifically for the hit song on the A-side, often by a 1-hit wonder or an artist whose deep cutz I have learned to put no stock in. Take Elton John. Long ago I realized that anything that’s not worthy of appearing on his Greatest Hits albums has not been worth my time. I’ve bought a couple of full Elton John albums over the years, and the album cuts never stick with me. The last thing I need to do is check out the B-side to “Someone Saved My My Life Tonight,” which come to think of it must have slipped from my orange singles box into another space in the cabinet in which I’ve loaded 45s, cassettes, DAT tapes, and other oddities.
What I’ve learned while burning singles over the past couple of weeks is that it is wise to B-ware the B-side. In some cases, I discovered or was reminded of a relative gem. In others, I thanked my lucky stars that I escaped childhood relatively untraumatized from ever having heard the lesser side.
As I continue to burn my stuffed orange plastic box of 45s I experienced a troubling realization: the excitement I felt in anticipation of burning XTC’s “Toys,” the C-side from a double 7-inch centered around the exquisite Mummer track “Love On a Farmboy’s Wages,” quickly dissipated to feelings of queasiness and shame. I pride myself in sticking with and seeing through the people and things I love, but I could no longer stand behind “Toys.” Music not only has the power to shape my worldview, sometimes it even offers a place to reside, a basis for a new or extended persona. A song I wrote at that time, while in the throes of “Toys,” sprung to mind. Lyrically it was the equivalent of me playing Cowboys and Indians with this XTC song. The Me Today looked back at the Me Yesterday and thought, What a dipshit!
How do I prevent looking back 30 years from now and realizing that Me Today, the guy talking to you with so much self-awareness and confidence, was yet again a total dipshit? Will you stand by me as I determine whether I can stand by my old singles-spinning self?
This set got me thinking about past and future generational clashes. The last significant generational clash was in the late ’60s, I think (or has that generation grossly exaggerated that era). To be sure, the punk movement rattled the elder’s cages but that was just a toothless threat. Now with kids living with the parents well into their 20’s it’s getting more difficult to foresee future generations organizing a righteous movement against establishment. Perhaps there should be a movement forcing the baby boomers back to work so they don’t completely drain social services for future generations.
What a summer it was. I turned 50 and got in the best shape of my life. I’ve embraced technology like I’ve never embraced it before. No hot tub. No convertible. Just straight-up rock ‘n roll, including the completion of a new album, the digitization of scratchy records, and a few more chapters in a book I’ve been picking away at writing. I wish I was headed back to school rather than work once this weekend ends. I’m ready for the fall regardless.
Consider your generation for a moment. It’s likely that you look back at the last few generations that came before you with a certain envy or admiration. Those past generation will likely remind you that times were better then without mentioning any of the negatives of their times. When you think of your generation you might be convinced that you improved upon the faults of the previous generation, especially when it comes to social issues. Of course, you distance yourself from the poor fashion sense and pop music of the times and heap a lot the blame on the “establishment” or the “mainstream.” Finally, the generations that came after you clearly doesn’t have a clue especially when it comes to music and film. They also have zero appreciation for your generation’s efforts on making this world a better place. When will they ever learn?
