Real Life Rock (197 page)

4
Paul Butterfield Band,
An Anthology: The Elektra Years
(Elektra)
1964–71, in no hurry. With heartbreakingly beautiful photos of handsome young men.

5
Paul Butterfield with the Band, “Mystery Train,” from
The Last Waltz
(Rhino reissue)
From 1976, and inside the perfect count, faster than sound.

6
John Ashcroft & the Paul Shaffer Band, “Can't Buy Me Love”
(
Late Night with David Letterman
,
CBS, April 9)
Ken Tucker writes: “Pressed by the host to sing his biggest hit, ‘Let the Eagle Soar,' the Attorney General declined. Instead, Ashcroft—who is, says one of his aides quoted in the April 15
New Yorker
, ‘in a great mood all the time these days'—used his time to chat about why he'd just arrested lawyer Lynne Stewart (Letterman maintained a patriotic silence; the audience applauded), and then got behind the keyboard to assay a stiffly-pounded instrumental version of the Beatles
hit. If he'd wanted to make extra-sure he'd never achieve a rhythm that might have tempted him to dance, which he believes is against his religion, he should have covered McCartney's more recent, Super Bowl stupor-inducing ‘Freedom.' Or, to be on the safe side, simply arrested Paul.”

7
“Secrets of Investing 2433” (unsolicited e-mail from
[email protected]
, April 10)
It's in the quick setup, the whiplash turnaround:

“Are you angered by the mess in the Middle East? Feel helpless?

“Since you can't change the situation, at least find out how it can change the quality of your life for the better.

“Click in the link below to quickly take a look on how turmoil in the Middle East could affect US oil prices and how you can counteract it.”

But wait—if “you can't change the situation,” how can you counteract it? Or does the “it” refer to your quality of life? And what about the grammatical impossibility of “take a look on how”? Who wrote this? And from where?

8
“Didn't Ask to Be Born” on
This American Life
(WBEZ/NPR, March 29)
After a divorce, Debra Gwartney moves to Oregon. Her two oldest daughters, Amanda and Stephanie, 14 and 13, pull away, hard, and take a long, hard fall. “When I first started getting into the punk rock scene in Portland,” Amanda says, “I got into it purely for the angry, drunk violence aspect of it. That's what really spoke to me at first.” About 50 minutes later, at the close of the program, host Ira Glass read the credits, ending up with thanks for funding from various sources, and especially “from the listeners of WBEZ Chicago, WBEZ management over-seen by Tobey Malatia, who explains what attracted him to National Public Radio this way,” and there was a cut right back to Amanda Gwartney: “I got into it purely for the angry, drunk violence aspect of it. That's what really spoke to me at first.”

9
Bandits,
directed by Barry Levinson (MGM Home Video)
The songs Jim Steinman writes may sound phony on the radio, and worse at home; in the movies they march across the screen like rock gods. That was heroically true in Walter Hill's
Streets of Fire
; it's modestly true here. You believe Cate Blanchett's housewife mouthing along to Bonnie Tyler's “Holding Out for a Hero” while whipping up an elaborate dinner for her husband to be too busy to eat. You believe her even more when she apologizes to thief-on-the-run Bruce Willis for loving Tyler's “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” “It's a sappy chick song,” she says. “It's not sappy,” he says, and you don't know whether to believe him. The line seems like a quick way into her pants, until he tops her with an all-time sappy guy song: his “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” he says, is Michael Murphey's “Wildfire”—which, fortunately for the viewer, Blanchett is spared. You don't see Willis getting lucky with that on the soundtrack.

10
Patti Smith,
Land (1975–2002)
(Arista)
With notes by Susan Sontag. “To the conquered!” she writes. Isn't that Ralph Nader's line? And where's “Pumping (My Heart)”?

Thanks to Howard Hampton and Cecily Marcus

MAY
6, 2002

1
Wilco,
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
(Nonesuch)
The cover features photos of Chicago skyscrapers, and the first four words, “I am an American,” are the same as those of Saul Bellow's 1953
The Adventures of Augie March
: “Chicago born,” Bellow said after a comma; “aquarium drinker,” Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy says without one. But Augie March knew how to walk against the wind on the streets, to go right past you with such force you turned around and watched his back, wondering who he was—while Tweedy's singing, never strong, here recedes into a dithering miasma apparently meant to signify thinking it all over, plus sound effects apparently meant to signify the modern world. In other words, it isn't against the law to redo
Revolver
, but that
doesn't mean it's a good idea. Especially if you're an American.

2
Sheryl Crow, “Soak Up the Sun” (A&M)
Money, fame, cheesecake photos, and on this song she still sounds like someone making her first record without the slightest interest in whether it will go anywhere at all.