Real Life Rock (181 page)

6
Elizabeth Elmore, “You Blink,” on the Elmore/Robert Nanna
Split EP
(Troubleman Unlimited)
“I knew enough to keep my mouth shut”—from the leader of Sarge, her voice smaller than ever, its demands on the world as big.

7
Firesign Theater,
The Bride of Firesign
(Rhino)
The surrealists loved the Marx Brothers; the four Angelenos of the Firesign Theater are what the Marx Brothers might have been if they were art theorists, or what the surrealists might have been if they had an American sense of humor. In the late 1960s and early '70s, they made comedy records that exploded the genre, infinitely layered stacks of commercial noise, un-produced TV shows, old radio plays and real elections, moving so fast that a stray pun could open up an entire new subplot, or drop the bottom out of whatever plot you thought you were following. But it was the Vietnam War, Firesign member Peter Bergman once said, that was at the root of it all. Did he mean the group's instinct for confrontation, their understanding that they too were at war, at war against the war, with whatever weapons they had? Or did he mean the absurdity that comes with the most justifiable of wars along with the most criminal? After the disarmingly low-key
Just Folks . . . A Firesign Chat
in 1977—an album that, like all of their true work, could take years to reveal itself—the troupe went into the wilderness; they didn't pull themselves out of the swamp of self-parody until
Eat or Be Eaten
in 1985, and even that evaporated after a few plays. That they have now made a record that doesn't immediately explain itself may be a very bad sign.

8
Luna, “ Going Home,” from
Bewitched
(Elektra, 1994)
Michael J. Kramer writes from Chapel Hill: “I can't get the lyrics of this dumb Luna song out of my head: ‘The Chrysler Building is talking to the Empire State; the Twin Towers are talking to each other; saying, “All is forgiven, I love her still”; and we're home, home, goin' home.' I don't quite know if it fits, but it was always in my head walking down toward the Knitting Factory with those two big towers hovering above, back when I was living in New York. And it's still in my head now.”

9
America: A Tribute to Heroes
,
telethon for families of Sept. 11 victims (Sept. 21, all networks)
On a very middle-aged, anti–rock 'n' roll show, Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit came across with Pink Floyd's “Wish You Were Here,” as did guitarist Mike Campbell inside Tom Petty's “I Won't Back Down.” Playing a pipe organ in the background as Eddie Vedder found his way into “Long Road” as if he didn't know everything the tune had to say, Neil Young looked so old you could imagine he'd crawled to the stage all the way from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl in the '30s—though that was also the impression he gave onstage at Woodstock in 1969. But it was Wyclef Jean and the Dixie Chicks who hit the high notes. Natalie Maines has a gorgeous voice, but with the new “I Believe in Love” it was also questioning, wondering what its own beauty was worth. It was one voice carrying the whole of the country style from the 19th century into a present that no longer existed, bringing a momentary peace of mind into a present that was now all future. Jean caught the heart of “Redemption Song,” Bob Marley's greatest composition; it's the melody that sweeps you up, because it's the melody that holds the song's immeasurable pain. But this night Jean also found the bravery in the music, and that became the music: the sense that to stand in public this night, in this way, for this purpose, might indeed be to risk your life.

Earlier, Jim Carrey spoke of evacuees in the World Trade Center carrying a woman in her wheelchair down flight after flight of stairs. “We found a courage,” Carrey quoted one of them, “we didn't know we had.” It was, Susan Sontag said in an ice-cold comment in the Sept. 24
New Yorker
, “a morally neutral virtue.” She was speaking of “an attack on the world's self-proclaimed super-power, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions” (some people can read minds, some people can't), stressing the courage of the attackers as opposed to those who, like American bombers over Iraq, or Belgrade or Kosovo, “kill from beyond the range of retaliation.” Presumably she meant that courage can be put to the service of purposes morally good or morally evil—as can sex, the accumulation of wealth, the equitable distribution of resources, or rhetorical eloquence. What virtue for Sontag would not be morally neutral? I can't read minds, but I'd bet on something like, you know, the literary imagination. Sept. 21 was just songs, rich and impoverished, dead and alive.

10
Cecily Marcus, report on United Airlines Flight 522 from Chicago to Buenos Aires (Sept. 16)
“On United's third day of flying after the attacks the movies showing were:
Shrek
,
Crocodile Dundee
,
A Knight's Tale
and
The Manchurian Candidate
. Can you believe that? I was too afraid to watch it.”

OCTOBER
15, 2001

1
Media crisis logos (Sept. 11–Oct. 7)
CNN: “America Under Attack,” “Target: Terrorism”; MSNBC: “Attack on America,” “America on Alert,” “America Strikes Back”; Fox News: “America's New War,” “America Strikes Back”;
Newsweek
: “War on Terror”;
New York Times
: “A Day of Terror,”
“ After the Attacks,” “A Nation Challenged”; the
Onion
: “Holy Fucking Shit.”

2
New Order,
Get Ready
(London)
What a dull title. What a great record. When Ian Curtis of the dark-end-of-the-street Manchester combo Joy Division killed himself in 1980, guitarist Bernard Sumner, bassist Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris decided to “keep the band together.” Instead of riding their already sainted name they changed it, added keyboard player Gillian Gilbert and set out to redefine dance music as a love unto death, as a merging of disco, romance and apocalypse. From “Temptation” through the seemingly countless remixes of “Bizarre Love Triangle” they soared through space and time. But that was all a long time ago.

Get Ready
is an album of muscle, with Sumner's old guitar-as-bass sound underpinning rhythms that feel as untested as a new car. In the jumps and changes, though, are moments of beauty so full and yet hard to catch they are more ominous than promising, more fleeting than present. When you go back to find them again, you can't: the churning “Turn My Way” is less a composition, or a jam, than a glimpse into something that can't be described, only pointed to. The songs don't hold still, don't hold shape—until “Rock the Shack,” which is the romantic apocalypse banged out in a garage, the teenage musicians trying out their sneers and volume, imagining a battle of the bands with the Swingin' Medallions.

3
Come Together: A Night for John Lennon
(TNT, Oct. 2)
Compared to this—from Yolanda Adams plus 12th Beatle Billy Preston turning “Imagine” into a mugging to Dustin Hoffman's crinkly insecure-superstar grin—the Sept. 21
America: A Tribute to Heroes
telethon was “Sympathy for the Devil.”