True Blood

So last night I'm laying in bed watching an interesting documentary on the life of Joe Stummer, the late leader of seminal punk band the Clash. What I found kind of telling, however, were some reactions to Joe's days prior to the Clash. There were grumblings by a few punk purists that Strummer was a "poseur" because he'd been an art school "hippie" type performing in rhythm and blues bands before he "became" a punk.

Never mind that to be a "punk" in the late 60's/early 70's probably meant you were a prison bitch rather than a musician, I'm not sure exactly what these naysayers expected Joe to have been. I guess he should have been hanging out with the Velvets, Stooges and the New York Dolls, but I don't think he had the coin to pull up stakes and move across the pond to America.

Personally, I admire the guy more for his ability to invent and then re-invent himself. All the greats do it, with perhaps Bob Dylan being the grand master at that game. Declan Patrick MacManus, better known as Elvis Costello and perhaps my favorite musician, is another ever-changing chameleon. Being "true to one's self" doesn't mean you need to do it for the rest of the world; in fact, it usually means you can't.

To me, substance is far more important than "truth." Or, more accurately, truth is more important than "facts." One of my favorite books of the 21st century is James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. When it came out that this "memoir" was much more a melding of some fact and a lot of fiction, Frey got crucified (mainly because he fooled the lord god Oprah). But the quality of the writing didn't magically dissipate. On the contrary, I admired it that much more as it showed Frey had a sense of imagination alongside his way with words. That it seems Frey is a pompous ass or that thus far the book appears to be this particular pony's one trick has likewise not diminished the work in my eyes.

My ultimate journalistic hero isn't Edward R. Murrow, it's Hunter S. Thompson. Murrow is close to the summit but Hunter and his Sherpa Ralph Steadman have firmly planted their flag at the top of the world in my opinion. Hunter's "Gonzo Journalism" was based on the adage that you should never let facts get in the way of your search for what's true. It's the substance of the story that matters more than the traditional view of "truth" (and Hunter used all manner of substance and substances in his quest to bend reality to this end). Not journalism, you say? Bullshit. Read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 for some of the best political reporting you're likely to find before or since. How much of it is true? All of it, more than almost anything I've read. How much of it is fact? Who cares.

Perhaps today's guru of the wise, Mr. Stephen Cobert, had it right when he coined the term "truthiness" in 2005 as that thing you know in your gut is the "truth" despite all absence of evidence, logic or fact. That he's being facetious doesn't make it less true.

The Mark of Catharsis

September, 1975. Dad lies stupefied on the couch, the foam padding exposed from rips in the cushions absorbing his sweat and bourbon-laced run-off spittle. The television in the corner talks to no one, some random game show host babbling on about the wonderful parting gifts. Mom is likely engrossed in her wine and a book on the love seat at the other end, but then occasionally and persistently calling to the dog for no particular reason. I feel bad for our mutt. Leave Snooks in peace, Mom; she's just trying to block this all out like me. I can hear these sounds faintly but still irritatingly clear, arriving with the smoke through the heating duct upstairs into my room. My Dad's wheezing under the game show noise is oddly comforting in its disturbance, letting me know that all is "normal" in my world. My world, where the horrific is soothing simply because anything else would imply abandonment. I aspire to Brady Bunch and Leave It To Beaver familial bliss only in the abstract, with the dysfunction I've come to depend on always bleeding through to balance my equilibrium (hence Leave It To Bitcher).

I'm lying on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. Trying to write smooth my barbed feelings with a number 2 pencil. It doesn't help. Bad poetry. Awkward imagery missing the mark of catharsis. Maybe I'll move to the desk and my typewriter; things always flow more easily for me from the keystrokes than they do by hand. I slug down the last of the cold coffee on the nightstand, jump up to flip over Meet The Beatles! and drop the needle on side two. George Harrison drowns out the sounds of slow death downstairs with his lead on the first track, Don't Bother Me. How appropriate, I think. And I smile.

I found Meet The Beatles at the Salvation Army Thrift Store two days ago and have pretty much been playing it non-stop ever since. I have memorized the liner notes (35 years later, I can still recite most of them from a usually faulty memory). It's as though they are a brand new band with a wholly new sound, exposing to me the doldrums that otherwise constitute the mid-70's music scene, at least as I was aware of it through Seattle radio up to that point.

I stumbled upon the Fab Four quite by accident, so in a very real way I am just now meeting the Beatles, though they broke up almost six years ago (and Capital first released this album to US consumers nearly seven years prior to that). It is a bit scratchy in spots but is a revelation to me nonetheless. And it will soon lead to the rest of their catalog, then to Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Ramones, Elvis Presley, Bruce Springsteen, The Clash and Elvis Costello (the crew that would collectively constitute my pantheon of rock and roll).

My rock and roll pantheon would later lead me to a promised land of musical magic, filled with thousands of artists coming from bluegrass to hip-hop and everywhere in between. But right now, in September of 1975, at perhaps the lowest point emotionally of my childhood, it is the Beatles alone who have saved me from bubblegum purgatory and early 70's "classic rock" hell. And in some ways helped to save me from myself.