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New (To Me) Record Round-Up

“Enemies Like This.” Radio 4. I root for Radio 4 like I root for the Mets. They’re the home team (if you can call Williamsburg anyone’s home) and they deserve to win. I’m not sure that this is the record that will make them stars, however. The propulsive poly-percussion and Gang of Four-style slashing guitars are still there, but after the first four tracks it all starts to lose steam.

“Big Star, Small World.” Various. I’m utterly perplexed that power pop never conquered the world. Infectious pop sensibilities, crunchy guitars: something for everyone, no? Instead, it’s a weird little niche for freaks like me. The grand-daddy of all power pop groups, Big Star, were feted with a tribute record from the little pups who worship them. Released in 2006, goodness knows how long these tapes were sitting on the shelf, as half the bands on “Big Star, Small World” (the Gin Blossoms, Afghan Whigs, Whiskeytown and Posies) have since broken up, and two of them (the Posies and the Gin Blossoms) found time to reunite, too.

Unfortunately, all the bands here are too faithful to the source material, and thereby pale in comparison to Big Star’s slender, seminal work. The Posies eke slightly more desperation out of “What’s Going Ahn” and Wilco manages to find even more tender nuance in “Thirteen.” Otherwise, there’s nothing here that doesn’t make you want to spin your copy of “#1 Record/Radio City,” instead. The reunited “Big Star” (basically, Alex Chilton and drummer Jody Stephens, augmented by various Posies) contribute a weak track, “Hot Thing,” that sounds like an outtake from one of Chilton’s anemic solo R&B records. Stick with the classics.

“One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This.” New York Dolls.A reunion that doesn’t disappoint, the living Dolls (all two of them) might have put out the best rock-n-roll record of 2006. It’s all snarling guitars, sneering attitude and horny come-ons. The delightful “Runnin’ Around” starts off as an ode to feet before delving into more freakiness and something about flesh-colored panties. Elsewhere, David Johansen declares that happiness is “Fishnets & Cigarettes” and goes shopping in the red-light district in “Rainbow Store.”

Since the Dolls imploded in the 70’s, Johansen found success as a comic actor, and the influence shows. Not so much singing as growling off-key, for most of the record, Johansen employs a hoary Noo Yawk accent that Archie Bunker couldn’t get away with. “Exorcise yer demons with that monkey grin,” he sings on the witty Christian Fundy-tweaking “Dance Like a Monkey,” “Cuz we gonny inherit the wind!” Gonny? That’s probably his ballsiest move on this ballsy record.

“The Believer.” Rhett Miller. On his second solo record, Rhett Miller disappointingly displays little of the songwriting wit and rock bravado of his band Old 97’s. Either temporarily out of ideas or else in need of good collaborators, two of the three good tracks on this record are retreads of earlier Old 97’s tracks. “Question,” which was no more than Rhett and his guitar on the 97’s excellent “Satellite Rides,” is somehow schmaltzier here, which means that this is the version of the song that we are all doomed to here at every wedding we ever attend until the day we die. “Singular Girl,” previously an outtake from the same record, suffers from the lack of ragged edges that the band gave it.

The saving grace of “The Believer” is a duet with Rachel Yamagata on “Fireflies.” Miller’s songwriting prowess is in full force here, audaciously referencing lines from at least three of his most beloved songs and tying an awkward comparison of his lost love to his mother and the so-bad-it’s-good analogy “In a jar / Fireflies / Only last for one night” into a slow-burning song of heartbreak and regret. This is why I buy this guy’s records, and why I can’t wait until the next proper Old 97’s record.

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The Elusive Third Party of the People

The Green Party failed to regain ballot status in New York on Tuesday. With its superior budget and no threat to the two-party system, the Working Families Party easily retained its ballot line. We have a new, independent socialist Senator in Vermont, although his Progressive Party studiously avoided incurring the wrath of the Democrats by not contesting any major elections.

This is a disappointing time for supporters of an independent people’s party. The Green Party is clearly on the wane, with ballot status in a few dozen states and the mighty Nader campaign of 2000 a fading memory. Not to be too pessimistic, but I have been predicting it for six years now. The Greens will join a crowded graveyard of similar efforts to establish a third party, a party of the people, to supplant the Democrats. They come along every few election cycles. There’s Bob LaFollette’s 1920’s Farmer-Labor Party, Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party in 1948, the 1960’s Peace and Freedom Party of Eldridge Cleaver, the 1970’s People’s Party of Benjamin Spock, the 1980’s Citizen’s Party of Barry Commoner and the Green Party of Ralph Nader. There is no such party on the horizon, just the detritus of past efforts, which exist here and there scattered among the states.

I was not a supporter of the Greens at their height. In 2000, I managed the Socialist Party’s presidential campaign of David McReynolds. I drafted the candidate to run, raised about $20,000, put him on the ballot in seven states (including Florida, where his 622 votes eclipsed the 537 votes by which Bush officially triumphed; fuck you very much), got him in front of dozens of college audiences and garnered some pretty fantastic press coverage for a tiny little party.

Was I wrong in 2000 not to support Nader’s candidacy, one of the most energetic, high profile threats to the two party system in the late 20th century? The answer to that question is complicated. Certainly in a year when the burning question among liberal circles was whether a vote for Nader was, in effect, a vote for Bush, it was a tad awkward to explain to people that, no, I wouldn’t be voting for Nader or Gore but for someone they’d likely never heard of. It struck most listeners as typical sectarianism of the socialist left, and, indeed, it was.

In the Socialist Party’s defense, our crystal ball was just as clouded as the Green Party’s. Ralph Nader ran lackluster, quiet semi-campaigns in 1992 and 1996 (the former in the Democratic New Hampshire primary, the latter as the Greens’ drafted standard bearer), and there was no telling in late 1999 (when the SP had to choose to run or not) that Nader would, in fact, campaign seriously, energetically and in the face of such opposition from his liberal former allies. Had I known then that he would do so, I would likely have still supported running a Socialist Party candidate, but I’d have been wrong. But even that is complicated. As exciting as the 2000 Nader campaign was, as much of a blow to the two-party system that it had been and as many activists that it created, as many voters it ripped away from the Democrats and as many progressives it split away from the shrill, bankrupt liberals, a few short months later, only the barest hint of the Nader movement was left as many of its supporters were scared back into the Democratic fold. Meanwhile, the attention that the Socialist Party got for its campaign (we delighted in media attention; I got David on “Politically Incorrect” and “the Daily Show” and my sarcastic voicemail in response to the Florida vote controversy was quoted in the “Washington Post.”) increased our tiny membership by about 30%.

But that’s a sectarian justification. As little as there was, in the end, to show for the Green Party effort, the right policy would have been to support it, to strike a blow at the two-party system and gain the long-term loyalty of as many voters as possible for an eventual mass party of the people. The problem with an organization like the Socialist Party, that makes the running of candidates under its banner – even if done in only a handful of instances a year – its raison d’etre is that it inevitably leads to the priority of party building over movement building.

The mass people’s party that we need will not be able to meet the stringent ideological requirements of sectarian socialists. It cannot be Marxian, although it must be free of corporate money and influence. We need a party that will push for universal health care, oppose militarism, democratize the broadcast media, promote equal rights for gays and affirmative action for blacks, that will be feminist in its internal decision-making, promote unions rights, expand Social Security, tax the rich, fully fund our schools, open up our ballots and push for fairer systems of elections. We socialists should take our place within such a party as activists and allies of the major streams of progressivism, only splitting after major reforms have been introduced and we can take a sizable following that demands to go further with us out of the party. It would be far better to be left opposition to powerful social democrats than weak liberals.

Should such a party form, it is likely to happen only when a large number of the furthest-left liberal elements of the Democrats – including many officeholders – are willing to finally break with the Siamese twins of capitalism, and might perhaps be cobbled together by the patchwork of state ballot lines and parties – the detritus at past efforts to create a national people’s party – that have gained substantial followings. Which means that the “correct” electoral policy for a socialist to follow largely depends on the state in which you live. In California, it means being active in the Peace and Freedom party, or even the Green Party. In Vermont, it probably means Bernie Sanders’ Progressive Party. In New York, it might mean a policy of boring from within the Working Families Party and forcing primary elections against the worst of the Democrats in the best of the districts.

Should I join another socialist organization, it will certainly not be one that considers itself a “party.” I’ve spent too much of my life trying to recreate the conditions of Eugene Debs’ long-gone era. We need greater flexibility of tactics and openness to our natural allies, and less nostalgia and sectarianism.

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Cultural Learnings of America

Your honor, it was the beer talking. Not me. It’s a lame excuse coming from Mel Gibson when he’s caught being himself (a sexist, anti-Semite yob), but even lamer when coming from drunken frat boys being drunken frat boys, on camera no less! The unnamed frat boys in question were the ignominious stars of “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.”

I don’t need to tell you that Borat is the brainchild of comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, a fake TV journalist from a former Soviet republic who baits Americans to say outrageous things (that they likely believe) with his seeming innocence. On his TV show, he famously got a bar room full of country-western fans to sing along with a song called “Throw the Jew Down the Well.”

The movie is savagely funny. It has a fair amount of poop jokes and Jackass-style gross-out humor, but it also has a keen eye for mocking the elite and the powerful, and the racism and sexism of ordinary Americans. While everyone is baited, some of our fellow citizens pass their tests with flying colors, such as the driving instructor who responds to Borat’s “traditional” two kisses on the cheek with a grumbly, “Well, I’m not used to that, but that’s fine.” But most take Borat’s bait and reveal the ugliest tendencies of Americans. A crowd of rodeo fans applaud Borat’s speech, in which he wishes that Bush drink the blood of every Iraqi man, woman and child; a gun store clerk responds to Borart’s query of the best way to protect against Jews with the instant recommendation of a very large handgun.

Unlike these other victims of the fake foreign journalist, the frat boys in question – who are so embarrassed by the spectacle they made that they are suing the filmmakers to have their appearance removed from the film – needed no prodding at all. As soon as Borat hitchhiked his way onto their RV, they were extolling the virtues of slavery, the innate inferiority of women and how tough it is to be a white man these days where no one gives you any breaks.

I saw the new Borat movie on opening night with a raucous Times Square crowd, and the scene with the frat boys was the only part of the movie that hushed the crowd. It wasn’t funny. It was scary and depressing. These morons are the future of America. They’re probably future Congressmen.

Writing in the Nation, Richard Goldstein accuses Borat of double standards, of couching bigotry in humor in order to get away with the bigotry that Borat himself employs. Goldstein either did not see the movie, or did not get it. It is significant that the only black people (other than Alan Keyes, who deserves mockery) who appear in the movie are in on the joke, and help satirize genteel white racism. Everyone is not fair game, just the rich, the powerful and the intolerant.

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Catching Up With Old Friends

I’ve discovered how old men are born. We get time demanding jobs, go to professional school, are subsumed by the demands of life. Our backs ache, our paychecks go to pay off the mortgage. We stop going to three concerts a week and buying a couple of new records every Tuesday. When we do buy a new record or go to a concert, it’s to catch up with an old friend, who’s, arguably (and you’d be arguing with us, comrade!) long past their prime. They don’t make rock-n-roll records like they used to. They never did.

I’m spending this evening with two old friends. Morrissey’s solo career turns off many. The solo careers of famous lead singer-songwriters (like Lou Reed and Paul Westerberg) are a fascinating part of the overall narrative of their lives. In Morrissey’s case, musically, this means pursuing his unique brand of classical rock which would have buried Johnny Marr’s guitars in violins and singing children, and, lyrically, a more literal exploration of his personal demons.

My friend and carpool comrade, Alan Amalgamated, insists that Morrissey’s lyrics have always been explicitly queer, while I believe that they were meant to be more ambiguous. A trusted former girlfriend once explained “Hand In Glove” as being a snide satire of self-absorbed lovers engaging in wretched PDA’s. Perhaps I put too much stock in her Masters degree in Literature, but it’s easy to hear sarcasm in a line like “And everything depends upon how near you stand to me.” Amalgamated finds a sense of daring and apprehension in the act of two men walking hand-in-hand, risking a bashing.

In any event, there’s less ambiguity now that Morrissey has dropped the pronouns. He just wants to see the boy happy. Is that too much to ask? That freedom, apparently, makes him so happy that the Moz is no longer wishing for a nuclear war to destroy him and the seaside town in which he resides. Instead, he’ll gladly sacrifice Pittsburgh for the chance to see the future when all’s well.

“Ringleader of the Tormenters” zips by with nary a clunker. Most songs are up-tempo, vaguely majestic with the usual pithy zingers. Even the repeated use of the children singers feels right.

Robert Zimmerman has a new record, too. Can three records released four and five years apart properly be considered a trilogy? “Modern Times” feels vastly less important than “Time Out of Mind,” which is to its credit. With his crack touring band behind him, Dylan seems determined to just have a good time.

He’s been thinking about Alicia Keys, which shows he is even more of an old man than me. I haven’t thought about Alicia Keys for at least two years. But I certainly feel that lyric, “This woman so crazy, I swear I ain’t gonna touch another one for years.” The spare ten songs stretch out comfortably over an hour etched on modified petroleum product. I’m sure there’s some deeper meaning to it all, but an old-fashioned record from an old-timer is a good time for me.

I’m almost encouraged enough to buy the new Paul Westerberg children’s movie soundtrack. That ‘un makes me nervous.

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