William Miller, Stillwater, and the Band-Aids, on the road; image courtesy of redriverautographs.wordpress.com

All right, folks. I’m home with the sniffles, so let’s roll up our sleeves for this one. I recently re-watched my VHS copy and am ready to get into it. At length. Double-album style. Watching the movie on video means I didn’t listen to any DVD commentaries to formulate my thoughts. And while I have seen the Untitled version, my opinions will mostly be generated from the theatrical release version. Keep this in mind reading on, but feel free to mix it up in the comments section. 

Now, this is a movie that pushes and pulls me like few other. As I’ve grown older, depending on how I felt when I watched it, I waft somewhere between charitable introspection and vitriolic rejection, one time even going so far as drunkenly telling a friend who likes this movie to shut up (sorry, Leigh!).

I wasn’t always this way. When it first came out during my senior year of high school, I looooooooved it. I saw it with my best friend Jamie and a boy I would later regret dating. Jamie was the editor of the school newspaper. I made my extracurricular committment to choir, but wished I had room in my class schedule to write for The Clarion. I wanted to be William Miller, the fifteen-year-old journalist protagonist who fills in for director Cameron Crowe and his own (idealized?) experiences as a writer. Figuring I could catch up in college, I set my sights on UT’s journalism school. By graduation, I assumed I’d be working as a rock critic in New York City, perhaps following bands like Stillwater, the fictitious classic rock band based on The Allman Brothers Band that breaks (then promises to make) Miller’s career.

My hope of being a rock journalist was officially dashed the second time I was not hired as a writer for The Daily Texan’s entertainment section. After this rejection, 19-year-old me reasoned that these fat cats were shills for the man with terrible taste in music. I might have even phrased it that way at the time. From here, I officially cast my lot with college radio.

It’s important to bring up music journalism, not only to burn on it out of bitter feelings of rejection. When this movie originally came out, it was a dangerous time for print publications like Rolling Stone and Spin, much like the early 70s was a dangerous time for rock music. 1973, the year this movie takes place, was a harbinger of the bloated, corporate, cool-hunting enterprise the mainstream music industry would become. By 2000, it had completely transformed into a deregulated, conglomerate behemoth, peddling a handful of marketable, palatable, and safe talent that could sell ancillary products and jack up the retail prices on those ancillary products, which the compact disc had become. Music listeners, irritated by ever-higher CD prices, began downloading illegally in earnest. Sometimes they were met with arrests and lawsuits. Sometimes those lawsuits were filed by the popular musicians they idolized. As a result of these actions, and some truly stupid strategies the music industry has used to push units, people are more incredulous of the music industry than ever.

It’s important to bring in the Internet and the ubiquity of digital technology too, as online communication affected print journalism. Throughout the 2000s, publications scrambled to keep up circulation and readership. Some were bought and sold to other conglomerates. Some turned from monthlies to quarterlies. Some drastically changed their content and marketing campaigns (the saddest one for me was Spin, a high school favorite that was Rolling Stone’s cool, younger sibling; by the time I entered graduate school, it packaged itself as the hipster version of Us and lagged behind e-zines like Pitchfork and Tiny Mix Tapes in its coverage of new music). Some shilled out to reality TV (looking at you, Rolling Stone). Some simply folded.

Along with publications, staffs shrunk due to budget cuts. Some folks survived the fall-out. Rob Sheffield came into the field from the academy and penned a touching memoir. Eric Weisbard became part of the academy, currently an American Studies professor at the University of Alabama. Some folks, like Sarah Lewitinn and Chuck Klosterman, became cults of personality. But others didn’t fare as well. Sia Michel lost her position as Spin’s editor-and-chief, though was hired on to be The New York Times‘ pop music editor. At some places, an entertainment staff was whittled down to one person, if there was a department at all.

Sarah Lewitinn, aka Ultragrrrl; image courtesy of daylife.com

With the implosion of print-based music journalism came the advent of e-zines like Pitchfork and, of course, blogs. These folks, for good or for bad, may shape what criticism will look like in this century. I, for one, do see some good to blog culture (barring, you know, my recent public involvement with it). The principle assets I have found with it are its immediacy and DIY ethic. I couldn’t get a staff position at the Texan. I wasn’t financially able to take an internship. In short, traditional modes of ascension in the field weren’t available to me or many others. But blogging allows (some) writers to continue researching, hone their craft, and figure out just why they’re so interested in their subject of analysis.

Of course, there are hazards to blogging. Our collective attention span for new sounds has diminished. Furthermore, a considerable amount of misinformation gets reported. However, while I’m tempted to attribute this to a lack of fluency with journalistic principles of investigating, reporting, and fact-checking, I don’t know if it’s that simple. I’d hasten to point out that blogging and traditional journalism are both vulnerable to errors, unfair coverage, unequal time, and other ethical issues in the wake of the 24-hour news cycle.

In short, I watch this movie and think three things: 1) I don’t know if William Miller would be a journalist today, as the publications he would want to work at might not be able to hire him, 2) I do think he’d be a blogger, as the fan-critic and musician-journalist binaries in media culture have been considerably blurred since the early 70s, and 3) while this movie seems quaint in its depiction of a just-booming American music industry, it still seems completely relevant, maybe even more so than when the movie was originally released. 

So, you would think based on all of this fodder, I’d love this movie. But it’s not so simple and the movie itself is only partly at fault. A major issue I have with the movie isn’t so much to do with its gender politics as it is with the gender politics of its fanboys. I have heard too many fanboys talk about this movie with fervor, as if God touched Cameron Crowe’s camera. They’ll regale folks with abstruse bits of commentary from the Untitled version and quiz people on what songs like Stillwater’s “Love Thing” and “Fever Dog” are really about (I think love and kicking addiction, respectively). They are often humorless, especially if you point out any similarities they might have to Vic Munoz, the movie’s Led Zeppelin devotee. Oh, and they always love Led Zeppelin. Always.

But Alyx. Smelly zealot fanboys shouldn’t keep you from liking a movie, you say. The movie has a lot of good things going for it, you add. There’s even a lot of interesting female characters walking around, being smart and human and brave, you note. You might even say they’re more interesting than altruistic protagonist William Miller, you whisper emphatically. Fair points all. So, let’s do what Mary Kearney did when I watched this movie in her gender and rock undergrad class and run through the women and girls we meet in Miller’s coming-of-age story. Note that many of them are autonomous beings, free agents on the road:

1. The Band-Aids, especially one Penny Lane (played by Kate Hudson in what many argue is her only credible screen performance). They are not groupies and consider themselves fans who are autonomous, exercise sexual agency, and are not disposable, though some musicians have trouble seeing them the way they see themselves.

1A. While Penny Lane is clearly the Band-Aid leader, I’ve always loved Sapphire (played by Fairuza Balk). Label it blonde antipathy or brunette solidarity, but it’s hard not to love this rough, mischievous, funny, and wise lady. Can you imagine the stories she could tell? She intimates with William’s mother about his travels on the road and how she should be proud of her son from a hotel phone. She’s responsible for orchestrating the orgy that takes William’s (who she calls “Opie“) virginity. She’s also the one who delivers the hard truth about Penny and William to guitarist Russell Hammond. And she’s the one who insists that younger groupies take birth control, appreciate the music, and quit eating all the steak at crafts’ services.

Sapphire is epic; image courtesy of fairuza.com

2. Alice Wisdom, a deejay whose playlist Lester Bangs rudely rejects. Now I don’t like The Doors either, Lester, but that doesn’t mean you should shout over her opinions and discredit her taste in music. Unless you’re actually discrediting the radio station’s taste in music, in which case the deejay’s role becomes even more compromised. And this woman is already compromised by having the regulatory whiskey-throated voice that all female deejays seem required to have or emulate.
3. High school girls running for gym class. Stillwater bassist Larry Fellows perks up at the view from the tour bus; Penny Lane gives them the finger, glad that she’s playing hooky. That she’s not them.
4. Fans. Some of whom are Band-Aids or groupies, most of whom are regular girls and women with jobs and parents.
5. Band wives and girlfriends. They were there before the band got signed, are not often there for the shenanigans on the road, and probably won’t be there after the break-ups and divorces. 
6. A particularly shrill feminist stereotype of a Rolling Stone journalist billed as Alison the Fact Checker. Sadly, she probably has to be in order to be heard in staff meetings. Plus, wouldn’t you be pissy if you were trying to forge a career, were all-too-cognizant of sexism and misogyny, but also loved writing about popular music? This is a question I’ve always wanted to ask Ann Powers, Dream Hampton, and Lorraine Ali.

"How do you do it, Dream Hampton?"; image courtesy of thestartingfive.net

7. A singer-songwriter jamming with another singer-songwriter who appear to be modeled after Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons. William sees them playing in a hotel room during his first visit at the Riot House.
8. William’s big sister, Anita. She has a turbulent relationship with her mother and leaves home to become a flight attendant, leaving her kid brother a haul of amazing records, including Joni Mitchell’s Blue. She even gives him some good advice about how to listen to The Who’s Tommy that seems to have a lasting impression.
9. And, of course, William’s awesome, anti-establishment, overprotective mother Elaine, who is a college professor in San Diego. She is also the family matriarch, and probably was even before her husband died. Besides Lester, Ms. Miller is one of the few rebels. They both hold the distinction of being the only people who recognizes that rock culture, and its attendant cheap thrills and promises, is just another corporate enterprise.

Anita and Elaine Miller clashing, with young William Miller looking on; image courtesy of rlslog.net

Now, now. The dudes are interesting too, you might say. And masculinity is a discursive minefield here. So let’s walk through it. Let’s make like the movie and use William Miller to do this.
1. Miller himself is a soft-eyed, feminine boy played by then-unknown Patrick Fugit. He is hopelessly in love with Penny, a girl who may be his age but is out of his depth and hopelessly in love with someone else.

William Miller and his quest for truth; image courtesy of blog.lib.umn.edu

2. Billy Crudup’s Russell Hammond is the talented, aloof, and cowardly lead guitarist for Stillwater. He’s technically better than his bandmates, and is quick to hover it over them. He takes William under his wing because he’s a fan, only to dismiss him when Bob Dylan makes an appearance at Max’s Kansas City. He also nearly ruins William’s journalistic integrity when his own credibility is on the line. He’s also in love with Penny, but more in love with becoming a rock star. He’s not so in love with his wife, Leslie. He loves himself more than anyone, and hates himself for it.
3. Stillwater lead singer Jeff Bebe (Jason Lee) feels differently toward Leslie. He also has considerable animosity toward Hammond, whose emergent fame and skill is threatening to eclipse him and the rest of the band.
4. Bassist Larry Fellows and drummer Ed Vallencourt round out the band. Fellows (played by singer-songwriter Mark Kozelek, who I named my cat after) seems only interested in barbeque and high school girls. Vallencourt (played by John Fedevich) is silent through most of the movie, until he announces that he’s gay during a traumatic airplane ride.
5. Dick Roswell (Noah Taylor) and Dennis Hope (Jimmy Fallon) manage the band. Fellows has been with them for most of their career. Hope convinces the band to cash in and sell out, most symbolically by trading their bus for a jet. They will regret this decision.
6. Jann Wenner and Ben Fong-Torres, Rolling Stone’s respective editor-and-chief and senior editor, who serve as William’s bosses. Note the Wenner is gay, though at this time in his career, he was married to a woman named Jane. They would go on to have three children before divorcing in 1995. I haven’t read anything on Wenner, but am fascinated to learn how he negotiated all of this. Note also that Fong-Torres is Chinese American and one of the few people of color in both the movie and perhaps the emerging mainstream rock music industry. Note also the “Torres” surname, which his father adopted, dropping “Fong,” in order to pose as a Mexican in order to be granted U.S. citizenship while Chester Arthur’s Chinese Exclusion Act was still on the books. The family later kept both surnames.

Stillwater, on the cover of Rolling Stone; image courtesy of jeffdurling.com

But William doesn’t really have much in common with Stillwater. He wants to be them, but is in actual fact a music geek. Two like-minded male characters empathize, and share a relationship that is at once classically masculine in its indexical organization of rock’s ephemera and, at the same time, feminine in their romantic, homoerotic obsessive fandom.
1. Lester Bangs, William’s mentor, played by the formidable Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is one of the main reasons I’ll be seeing Pirate Radio. Reportedly, his scenes were filmed while he had the flu. Bangs hates what rock journalism has become.

Lester Bangs imparting life lessons to William Miller; image courtesy of playground.chronicleblogs.com

2. Vic Munoz, played by longtime Apatow mainstay Jay Baruchel. He’s the Zeppelin fan who follows the band everywhere, clutches a marker frontman Robert Plant once held, and wears his “Have you seen the bridge?” t-shirt at all times.

I should point out, however, that the girls index too. Penny Lane may not want William to take notes during Stillwater concerts, but that doesn’t mean that she, her peers, or William’s sister Anita, can’t rattle off band line-ups, industry players, and song lyrics.  

And lest we forget that William actually forges strong relationships with his sister, his mother, and the Band-Aids. While Sapphire, Polexia, and the gang seduce William, they also believe in him, intimate secrets with him, and provide him support, though they sometimes treat him as a minion and less as an equal.

I should also point out, since I opined that Miller doesn’t have much in common with Stillwater, that he does have an interesting relationship with Hammond nonetheless. Miller, a kid brother with an older sister, doesn’t seem to have any male friends or role models before he takes Bangs’s assignment to cover Black Sabbath for Creem, a band for whom Stillwater is opening and launches Miller’s almost-too-good-to-be-true feature assignment for Rolling Stone.

I wouldn’t necessarily categorize Hammond as a friend or role model. Perhaps he’s better suited for an older brother position. At first, Miller looks up to Hammond, calling his guitar-playing “incendiary” and trying (largely in vain) to emulate his slingin’, ’stached bravado. But, despite a Band-Aid orgy (controlled by the women who believe that “Opie must die”), Miller clearly doesn’t have that kind of swagger. He also doesn’t seem to want it, seeing Hammond’s cowardice beneath it. He also recognizes the irony of such inauthentic displays of machismo and ego in a form supposedly as authentic, romantic, and pure as rock is supposed to be, and is quickly unbecoming. Perhaps he also notices the rigid gender roles and chauvinism that inform the supposed gains of free love and the sexual revolution. This hypocrisy, along with the band’s quick rejection of real fans for industry success and the promise of rock mythology, make Miller able to put Hammond and his band mates in their place during the climactic plane scene. His honesty and integrity also earns him their trust, especially Hammond’s, who finally grants him a real interview at the end of the movie.

As an aside, if Hammond is Miller’s imperfect older brother, he steps right into the role by sassing Ms. Miller when he first talks to her on the phone, immediately snapping into a “yes ma’am, no ma’am” routine when she admonishes his behavior and values.

Miller’s character also wins the respect of Penny Lane, even when she’s ignoring the icky realities of seeing yourself as a fan but being treated as a groupie, as disposable as a real Band-Aid.

Note that it doesn’t win Lane’s affections, at least not physically. She may be too hard for or scared of Miller’s feelings (which are announced, unfortunately, in a scene where Miller kisses Lane, who just overdosed on Quaaludes). She may not be ready for rejecting her own rock star mythology in order to be truly intimate with someone (though she suggests she might when she tells Miller that she came into this world as one Lady Goodman). Maybe doing so would make her the typical teen she (and William’s mother) see little value in becoming. Maybe not consummating this relationship suggests they have no interest in typical interactions with one another.

Yet Miller’s and Lane’s relationship, which seems built on male fantasy, is an issue I have with this movie. I don’t get what the fuss is about, frankly. I understand that Lane is pretty, savvy, and well-traveled, but don’t understand why Miller has such a crush on her, primarily because I don’t understand how loving a band’s music leads you toward doing their ironing backstage while the boy you love in the band can’t be bothered to love you back. More importantly, I don’t know who she really is. Maybe the self-mythology is part of what prevents me (and certainly Miller) from getting close. Maybe the challenge of trying to find out who the real Penny Lane is warrants enough of a fascinating exercise for Miller. And maybe it isn’t any of our business who Lane really is. But I sort of wonder if she’s perfectly matched with Hammond, a man who wants desperately to be the myth he’s created for himself. Maybe this suggests that both of them have something in common with Don Draper. Here’s one scene where I think Lane, alone after a concert, drops the masquerade (note that the scene follows Stillwater’s treacherous meeting with super-manager Hope).

Admittedly, perhaps my problem resides in Kate Hudson’s performance. Perhaps I want her not to channel her mother, herself a manic pixie dream girl of this era, so much. Perhaps I’m projecting Goldie Hawn’s presence and ignoring how Hudson is making this role her own. I do think Hudson does a good job balancing Lane’s contrasts and contradictions, perhaps a better job than Kirsten Dunst (who almost got this role, but was cast in Crowe’s Elizabethtown instead) would.

And I do think I’m being unfair in my dismissal of Kate Hudson and Penny Lane. Because I think my real problem, as it usually is with Crowe’s movies, is the director’s unfortunate habit of crutching on the magic of pop music. Admittedly, this might be a hard habit for a music geek director to break, but it has kept me from enjoying his other movies (including, yes, Say Anything). And it’s probably contradictory for a music fan not to like pop music playing such a pronounced role in Crowe’s work. To me, however, Crowe’s use of pop music suggests the necessity of delicate application. Because I hate how he uses Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” in one of the movie’s big reconciliatory moments, as its obvious that he is making the case for how pop music’s universality heals all psychic wounds. When Lane tells Miller that he is home, all I can think is “fucking duh.”

While I feel like the movie’s score adds to the treacle (especially during the scene when Miller runs with Lane’s departing plane), I do admire Cameron Crowe’s ongoing collaborations with wife and Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson. We’d do well to remember Wilson’s rock legend status, score work, and Crowe’s relationship with Wilson when making sexist assumptions about Sofia Coppola’s relationship with Phoenix’s Thomas Mars, who is working on her next movie, Somewhere. We might also like to keep it in mind when thinking about Karen O’s involvement in ex-boyfriend Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are.

Going back to Crowe’s unfortunate flirtations with the obvious for my closing remarks, he does make a few other points in this movie in highlighter yellow that I love anyway. So much so that I’ve shaped my life around them. In the interest of full disclosure, I will share them now, suggesting that sometimes flirtations with the obvious are essential and humane.

1) The introductory scene between Bangs and Miller, when Bangs talks about staying up all night, writing about music. Whether or not he was high on cough syrup and speed or the tomes he devoted to The Faces or John Coltrane were dribble didn’t matter. The objective, as William knows well, is ”just to fuckin’ write.” It’s an objective I know well too. It’s a key reason why I put this blog together in the first place, and I’m certainly not alone.
2) Lane has a great line as well, one that has stayed with me as I age. I’m a firm believer in the advice she gives Miller when she drives them to the Riot House: ”if you ever get lonely, you just go to the record store and visit your friends.” The comfort I have found in record stores cannot be overstated, and I only hope that, as I get older, at least a few of them don’t get completely mowed down to make way for more lucrative businesses. I might have to stay in a city that shares kinship with Austin to assure this, but I think it’s worth it. I’d rather live in a city that appreciates the cultural and communal value of record stores over a city that only sees value in their market returns.  

After all this, I believe Almost Famous to be an interesting and challenging movie at times marred by its idealism, sentimentality, and emphasis on one very lucky boy’s experience following around a band and writing down what happened. Thus, it’s a movie I keep coming back to, even if I don’t feel the need to replace the tape.

It’s hard to believe that Backspacer is Pearl Jam’s 9^th album.  Even weirder is that they’ve been in the cultural consciousness for 18 years.  7 more years and they’ll be eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. All of these things show their age, unlike the new album.  Critics are all repeating the same mantra: that this is their punkiest album yet. And they are mostly right (although I would argue that Vitalogy is up there as well).  They also are pointing out the brevity: at 36 minutes it is obvious on first listen that this is an album trimmed of all fat. I’m sure there are some great songs that didn’t make the cut, but the album is stronger as a result.  Short and punchy and to the point.

I am not sure why I continue to allow myself to get annoyed with some of the reviews in Rolling Stone.  Rob Sheffield wrote the review for Backspacer, and it’s a good review, with one major exception (It should be noted that Rob Sheffield was incapable for writing about a band for a few years without “cleverly” using some of their lyrics in an ironic (ie-stupid/lazy/boring) way. Case in point: Pearl Jam are still alive; Eddie Vedder’s thoughts arrive like butterflies; The band’s albums have all been washed in black, tattooed everything, etc…no, Rob, you cannot use those). Anyway, Mr. Sheffield’s major offense in the review was calling “Spin the Black Circle” off of Vitalogy filler. He claims that people were usually skipping those kind of songs to get to the latest torch song by the band.  While they very well may have skipped said songs, they were hardly filler.  I didn’t have the chance to see Pearl Jam on their tours for Ten or Vs, but I’ve seen enough footage to know they were a very kinetic live band, and that frenzy did show up on the recordings.  Their punky side showed up in songs like “Porch”, “Blood”, “Whipping”, “Brain of J”, “Do the Evolution”, etc.  None of these songs would be what Pearl Jam fans consider “filler”.  Stale references to lyrics and pop culture are a better definition, I think.

But I am not writing to slag on Rob Sheffield (I actually enjoy some of his writing, when he’s not trying to be too cute). I’m writing to celebrate Pearl Jam, and their longevity.  As I write this, I’m listening to the first of 2 concert downloads that came free with the purchase of the new album. It’s touches like this that really make Pearl Jam seem for the fans, by the fans. It’s well documented that Eddie Vedder pretty much had an obsession with The Who while he was growing up.  He has gone to great lengths over the years to prove he is just a fan like the rest of us. I’ll do without quoting a particularly curt line from “Satan’s Bed” off of Vitalogy that proves this. Instead, I’ll mention that on the new album there are a couple of songs where he mentions just being a human being. And after all these years, it seems to me that he and his bandmates have won the benefit of the doubt. No, they aren’t as big as they used to be. But just like Elton John in probably the most flamboyant video of the 80’s, they are still standing after all this time.  See, now I’ve fallen into the Sheffield trap. At least I dragged another artist into it, though.

By Rob Sheffield

“Now we had a whole different language to learn, a new grammar of loss to conjugate: I lose, you lose, we lose; I have lost, you have lost, we have lost. Words I said out loud, every day, many times a day, for years and years–suddenly they were dust in my mouth.” ( Sheffield; 157)

I just finished a book I started a long time ago. I tend to begin a novel and stop three chapters in, this has to do with my fear of endings. If I go on a reading  hiatus that happens to be indefinite it doesn’t have to stop. Well, it did. I’ve always said, “The tracks may end, but the sound never stops” and Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time is the epitome of that phrase. This book made everything in my world feel like it wasn’t out of context. Music and love have always just gone hand in hand. Rob Sheffield ( Pop Life writer for Rolling Stone–recently he did this great piece about True Blood) understands this like nobody’s business. He lost his beloved wife, and she was only in her 30’s and as The Carpenters sang they had “only just begun.” The novel is an ode to era, a space in his life that was meant for and consumed with his love for Renée and the cassette tapes they made. It deals with his life as a husband and an inescapable widower. Pop culture is brought about so tastefully here and in a way that doesn’t pollute the writing. This autobiography has soared to the top of my favorite books chart. It was painstakingly witty and sorrowfully joyous. Love is a Mix Tape also made me want to make a mix about crying, because I sure did sob my way through this one.

1. “Why I Cry”-Ben Gibbard cover

2.”Cryin’”-Aerosmith

3. “The Con”-Tegan and Sara

4.” The Tracks Of My Tears”- Smokey Robinson

Sheffield also made me really want to listen to:

1. “The Rain”- Missy Elliot feat. Timbaland

2. “Hypnotize”- Notorious B.I.G.

3. “I’ll Be Missing You”-Puffy

You also can’t go wrong with The Replacement’s album Tim.

Written by Rachel Summers

rachel.dustbowl@gmail.com

Ou les lectures des semaines passées.

J’avais déjà parlé des nombreuses coïncidences qui ont marqué ma lecture de Sans parler du chien de Connie Willis… Que dire d’autre de ce roman ? Qu’il ne m’a pas autant plus que Le grand livre ? Oui, sans doute. Mais quand même… Plusieurs histoires à plusieurs époques différentes se mêlent (le 21e siècle, la destruction de la cathédrale de Coventry par un raid nazi, les abords de la Tamise près d’Oxford dans l’Angleterre victorienne) mais chaque élément de l’histoire a son importance, comme dans les romans d’Agatha Christie, souvent cités par les protagonistes. Je ne donnerai pas la clé de l’histoire, mais sachez qu’une petite phrase des débuts du livre a toute son importance ! Un roman très plaisant et léger (contrairement au sujet très grave et triste du Grand livre) basé sur des recherches historiques approfondies et qui fait un portrait très vivant du 19e siècle anglais.

Retour dans mon passé d’adolescente avec Bande Originale de Rob Sheffield. Journaliste rock pour MTV et Rolling Stone, celui-ci écrit une sorte d’autobiographie sur base des compilations qu’il a enregistré au cours de sa vie sur cassette audio; le titre anglais est d’ailleurs plus explicite: Love is a mix tape: life and loss, one song at a time (un bien joli site d’ailleurs). Chaque chapitre commence par sa playlist, avec face A et B, et décrit comment la musique a influencé sur sa vie, depuis les premiers émois de l’adolescence – il était responsable de la musique qui était jouée au bal de la promo – à ses premiers amours – la cassette idéale à offrir à sa bien-aimée ou celle qui traduit la rupture, et puis plus loin, comment sa vie avec l’amour de sa vie, Renée, sera trop vite interrompue… Un très beau roman, plein d’émotions mais aussi plein d’espoir qui m’a rappelé certaines périodes de mon adolescence ou de mes vingt ans, quand j’écoutais la même musique et fait plein de références à la culture populaire des années 80-90 (l’auteur a quelques années de plus que moi et est né en 1966).

In meinem Leben ist es zwar nur ein Mixtape, das aus Songs besteht, die von Zynikern und Witzbolden sowie enttäuschten Misanthropen geschrieben wurden, aber nichtsdestotrotz.

Allerdings geht es hier nicht um mein erbärmliches Liebesleben, das regelmässig auf dem Schulhof verprügelt wird, nein, es geht um das wunderbare Buch von Rob Sheffield, seinerseits Musikjournalist und Autor.

In dem Buch geht es um – na was wohl – Liebe und Musik. Allerdings wird vor allem Letzteres auf eine derartig unkritische Art und Weise beschrieben, dass es nicht nur ein Liebeslied an die Liebe, sondern auch an Lieder an sich ist. Als Leser muss man daher kaum über ein gehässiges Kommentar zu einer bestimmten Band stolpern, die man selbst eigentlich gerne mag (naja, mit Ausnahme von XTC, aber das sind wirklich die Einzigen, warum auch immer). Das ist mal eine Abwechslung, da die Liebe zur Musik nicht immer dadurch geprägt sein muss, uncoole Bands durch den Dreck zu ziehen. Stattdessen gibt Rob Sheffield seine viel zu kurze Zeit mit Renèe in dutzenden Mixtapes wieder, lässt die Songs durch die gedruckten Wörter hindurch klingen und macht viel Spaß beim Lesen, selbst dann, wenn einem die Tränen kommen. Großartig.

Cover of Exile in Guyville, released on Matador in 1993; image taken from The Village Voice

I’ve never been as excited and nervous about purchasing an album as I was with Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville. Of all the albums I’ve ever bought, I think I know more about it than anything. I studied the thing for nearly seven years before I bought it.

So, I was almost 10 when this album came out in 1993 and, if you know anything about it, you know it’s laden with immodest lyrics like “I’m a real cunt in spring,” “He’s got a really big tongue that rolls way out,” and, well, all of “Flower.” As an avid Rolling Stone reader, I was well-versed in this aspect of the album, because it seemed like this, along with it supposedly being an answer record to the Rolling Stones’ gritty masterpiece Exile on Main St., was of the utmost importance to male rock journalists.

Anyway, I was way nervous about getting this album and, ever the arbiter of self-control, I’d keep myself from using allowance and later paycheck money to buy it. I’d mentally smack my hand and say “Not now. You’re not ready.” If my mom knew I invested so much mental energy worrying about the explicit content of an album, she probably would have just bought the thing for me.

I finally bought Phair’s debut album on my seventeenth birthday. My friends Amy and Ryan pooled together $30 for me and I went to Barnes and Noble, determined to buy this taboo item. I took a deep breath, strolled to the music section, blithely snatched the album (along with GusGus’s This Is Normal), paid for my purchase, and ran out of the store in a flush. I went home, turned my stereo to the lowest audible volume and listened to the entire album lying on the floor, inches away from the speakers. The experience had a wrapt solemnity that others might have given the loss of their virginity. I was not the same after listening to it.

If I spent this much time mentally preparing for how my life would never be the same after hearing the album, I spent the next two years listening to it every day, learning every word, memorizing the instrumental tracks, tuning my ear to the watery guitar melodies, and poring over the Clint Eastwood/porn star sleeve art.

Sleeve art for Exile In Guyville, Part I

Sleeve art for Exile In Guyville, Part II

And I wasn’t alone in my investment in this album. I remember sharing this album with my then-boyfriend Kyle. As choir nerds, we particularly loved that the song “Flower” was a) super-dirty and b) a madrigal!

The first thing I’ll tell you that I loved about it was Phair’s voice. What Rob Sheffield referred to as “Peppermint Patty on a bad caffiene jag” in the Spin Alternative Record Guide is a pretty good description. Her voice was dry, low, and raspy. She had a perfectly average voice. It wasn’t a scream, like Courtney Love’s. It was unimpressed, garbled when she hit low notes, strained at the high notes, beyond deadpan. I’d later find out that she was inspired by lo-fi acts like The Spinanes and Tall Dwarfs (and maybe, perhaps on an unconscious level, Anna Da Silva and Gina Birch of The Raincoats or Moe Tucker from The Velvet Underground). At the time, though, it sounded like nothing else I’d ever heard. It sounded like she was right in the room with me.

Her voice was very relateable, seemingly the voice of someone who had done everything right up until the point of recording and was just really tired of being the smart, good girl. One need only listen to “Canary,” a song set to “Chopsticks” about a girl who obeys all the rules, gains nothing from it, and is ready to set everything on fire because of it. At seventeen, I could totally relate.

Phair’s singing style juxtaposed nicely with her look. Now, I’m not gonna slobber all over her the way that some rock journalists at the time. Yes, she’s attractive. But, more importantly, she looked very straight-A student white girl next door — perhaps what girl studies scholar Anita Harris would label a can-do girl. Again, very relateable, as I was at the time in Chamber Choir, a member of National Honor Society, French Club, Drama Club, and other nerdy, non-controversial extra-curriculars. But I was also sexually frustrated — at once eager to experiment but nervous about going too far and yet all-too-ready to lie to my friends about what I actually had done.

I think these aspects of her sound exaggerate the blunt shock of her lyrical content which, as mentioned earlier, was pretty graphic. At the time, this lumped her in with third wave’s “do-me” feminism, an eye-rollingly glib and essentializing term that suggests that females can be empowered simply by celebrating their sexuality (absenting, of course, how normative this concept could be in terms of gender roles and sexuality, and how the ones who tend to benefit from it are middle-class white women, who don’t have the cultural baggage of being branded excessive by being too young, working class, queer, or women of color).

Thinking about Phair as a “do-me” feminist also essentializes her lyrical content to being limited to just fucking, which is not all she was doing with Exile in Guyville. As hinted at in the title, she also wrote critically about patriarchy. There are entire songs about the fallacy of male machismo (“Soap Star Joe”), wishes to reverse the double standard between men and women (“Explain It To Me”), feeling invisible (“Canary”), getting bullied by men (“Help Me, Mary,” “Johnny Sunshine”), as well as anthems dedicated to not putting up with it anymore (“6′1″”). Coming out of the male-dominated Chicago underground music scene, she had a lot to rebel against.

In addition to open feminist critiques, Phair was often elliptical in her approach to fighting patriarchy. She referenced the work of male musicians (the title itself winks at both The Rolling Stones and Urge Overkill’s song “Goodbye to Guyville”), swiping hooks, lyrics, and album concepts to reframe her work, reclaiming much of rock’s cocksure attitude for her own purposes. Sometimes she would lie — the most famous example being “Fuck and Run,” where she claims to have done just that since she was twelve. Phair would later go on to admit that this was a fabrication, which made others cry foul.

However, these sorts of lies I think are told for the sake of one big truth: that rock music’s obsession with authenticity betrays its practitioners’ desire to self-mythologize, fabricating whole identities that don’t align with their actual gender, race, class, and sexuality; that, indeed, authenticity is itself a gigantic lie. That this lie is being purported by a girl strumming a guitar into a 4-track in her bedroom makes its execution all the more stunning.

Also, focusing so extensively on the shockingly dirty lyrics from the pretty blonde lady strumming her guitar eclipses an actual discussion of her guitar-playing, which is great and contributes extensively to her sound. Her tunings, phrasings, chord structures, and harmonies have a warped quality to them at odds with the immediacy and catchiness of her music compositions.

It’s unfortunate that this album gets a lot of emphasis placed on it in relation to the other two albums that she did with Matador (though whitechocolatespaceegg was also distributed through Capitol, who she later signed with, who held a considerable stake in the company between 1996 and 1999 before owners Chris Lombardi and confirmed nice guy Gerard Cosloy bought back the label). Both Whip-Smart and (most of) whitechocolatespaceegg, in my estimation, capture Phair’s wry lyrics, idiosyncratic tunings, musical references, and indelible ways with pop hooks.

And while I found her attempted pop star turn working with the Matrix in the 2000s to be unfortunate, primarily because it seemed to take the particularities of her voice and sound out of the product, I also think it’s important to remember that, to rephrase an ESG EP title, indie cred doesn’t pay the bills. Sneering at her later work and dismissively stating that “Liz Phair sold out” absences the fact that she’s a single mom who makes music for a living. While perhaps becoming a pop star is not the answer (and certainly didn’t help Phair much financially), deriding this career move out of hand eclipses the necessary discussions that need to be had around how unfairly the commercial music industry compensates its artists, how monopolistic they have become, how difficult it is for independent labels to stay in business, and what little regard the mainstream music industry has for older female artists.

That said, her debut album lives on. Just a couple of weekends ago at a friend’s birthday party, I sang this song (courtesy of Karaoke Underground), doing back-up with my friend Karin while our friend Erik killed the lead vocals. And, of course, with the 15th anniversary re-release, folks like Shayla Thiel-Stern have done considerable reflection on what this album means to them, how it has influenced contemporary music, and how it shaped their feminist beliefs. I hope that it continues to inspire generations of girls and boys to spend hours with it, whether playing it above a whisper or at full volume.

Live on, Liz Phair; image courtesy of NYMag.com

If you have anything to add to this series, please do. E-mail submissions to feministmusicgeek@gmail.com. Don’t worry about abiding by tired genre hierarchies. Jean Grae, Sleater-Kinney, and Kylie Minogue are equal in that regard. Remember that the personal is not only political but educational, so feel free to share any memories or recollections that you’d like in conjunction with the artist/record/concert/scene/album cover/music video that made you a feminist. Thanks!

Thanks to all the episodes of Scrubs I’ve watched recently for inspiring this blog’s title.

Life is fragile.  I’m about two-thirds of the way through Rob Sheffield’s LOVE IS A MIX TAPE:  Life and Loss One Song at a Time.  It’s the second book in a row I’ve read where the wife dies suddenly after just over five years of marriage.  I didn’t select either book knowing what they were about.  As I do with most of the random books I read, I chose them based on their title and/or book cover.  By the way, the other book I read was called LONG WAY BACK. It sucked.  I mean, I could relate to the main character in some ways, particularly his music taste and being defined and soothed and counseled and driven, etc. by music, but the book was just pointless.  It started nowhere, but then it made a promise of spiritual renewal and resurgence…a promise that I was excited about, but alas was never fulfilled.

Both books deal with husbands whose wives pass away suddenly and unexpectedly; one from a pulmonary embolism and the other from a burst brain aneurysm.  Both books use music to convey emotion to the reader.  Both husbands use music as a way to cope with the awful.  Both husbands are defined by and driven by music; one as a musician, one as a DJ and writer.  It is incredibly easy for me to relate to both husbands, and yet terrifying.

Rob Sheffield talks about when his wife died and he lay on the floor in the fetal position amidst the detritus left by the EMTs who never truly had a chance to save her.  He just stayed there clutching the phone, waiting for Renee to call and say there was a mistake and she would be returning home.  In LONG WAY BACK, the main character, Francis, retreats to his basement, dons his dead wife, Lourdes’ Harvard Medical sweatshirt and clicks aimlessly and incessantly through channels on his big screen TV for months, only stopping to pay the pizza delivery boy or watch the occasional Boston Bruins game.  Reading these stories and being so similar to these men in many ways, I’m forced to think about life without Becky and alternatively, the selfish hope that if I pass away first, I won’t have to suffer that pain and loss.

Neither husband in these books had kids, and I do, so I don’t think I would get the luxury of watching TV aimlessly or lying on the floor.  I would have to be a dad, and I would like to believe that I would be the best possible, but outside of fatherly duties, I fear I would be an empty shell, moving mechanically through life without my love.

I’m a “take it for granted” kind of guy by nature.  I’ve known this for a long time.  I remember standing outside Marshall Hall as a sophomore being lectured by Juliette.  She said, “You take this relationship for granted.  You just think that I’m always going to be here and that now that we’re dating, you don’t have to do anything else.”  I probably denied that all the while knowing how true it was.  Becky and I have had almost identically-worded…uh…let’s say “discussions.”  I’ve been making a conscious effort over the past few years not to take things for granted.

The sun.  It is beautiful.  I try to indulge in its beauty.  Ariella.  I try to mentally capture as many smiles, kisses, hugs, laughs, accomplishments and tribulations as my inadequately human brain can store.  My parents.  In all likelihood, my folks are going to kick it before I do.  I don’t want to waste any time I have with them.  I love them.  Most of all, though, I’ve been trying not to take Becky for granted.  I wish I knew how to express the attention I’ve been trying to pay her.  I try to capture and remember even the most mundane moments: the way she wiggles into (or out of) the tank tops she wears as pajamas, the way the skin of her shoulders looks darker in the light reflected off our red bedroom walls than it does in the fluorescent wash of our kitchen, the way she smiles knowingly when she asks me how my workday went and I reply with only a word or two, the way she eats popcorn (even though she knows I hate it) during movies without ever taking her eyes off the screen…the list could go on for miles.  I like to think I’m constantly getting better at not taking things for granted.

And on Friday, I had a reminder.  I think of myself as relatively healthy.  I dropped 80 pounds a couple years ago, and I really try to watch what I eat and get some exercise every day.  Bad stuff runs in my family though.  My mom has high blood pressure.  My dad has diabetes.  My grandfather has diabetes and a litany of other issues.  My paternal grandparents both died from cancer.  My aunt just died from complications of M.S.  Another of my aunt’s also has an aggressive form of M.S.  Another aunt has like 100 artificial joints (and that is probably barely an exaggeration) due to rheumatoid arthritis.  My grandmother has fibromyalgia.  My brother has asthma.  I feel like a lot of my life has been learning how to feel alive around sick people.

On Friday, Becky and I were downstairs watching Scrubs on DVD before bed, and around 11:00 PM, we headed upstairs to get ready to sleep.  I immediately split for the bathroom to empty the old bladder, as is my custom.  Becky went to change into PJs.  As I stood there peeing, I had this light-headed cold-sweaty feeling.  I remember thinking, “Am I about to throw up?  What did I eat last?  The chicken seemed cooked well enough.”  The next thing I remember was hearing a really loud, close-by crashing sound.  Then, I remember Becky saying, “What happened?  Are you okay?”  I felt like I’d been asleep and she was waking me from a bad dream, but when I opened my eyes, I found myself sitting on the bathroom floor with my back against the wall and window sill, my fly still open and a huge bruise and scrape on my back.

Ashamed and somewhat scared, I picked myself up, and rushed to bed.  My head was still soaked in a cold sweat, and if I was going to pass out again, I wanted to already be horizontal.  The loud crash I heard?  That was my back slamming into the wall, blinds and floor.  I felt really out of it for the rest of the night, and the following day, while I felt more or less okay, my head felt somewhat disconnected.

I hate doctors, but I think it might be time to get a check up.  Make sure the old ticker’s working properly.  Until right now, only Chip, my confidant of late, and Becky know about this.  Welcome to the concerns in my life.

This picture summarizes what I will be doing today in Kelowna… provided I can find some cetirizine hydrochloride to keep my @#$%ing allergies at bay!

Rob Sheffield’s new book is going to be called Talking To Girls About Duran Duran “Because that’s how I’ve spent most of my life,” Sheffield says.   Soma, I yield.  I will pick this up and check out Love Is a Mixtape.   How much like Nick Hornby is he?  I haven’t read him yet.

Taylor Hanson is in a new power-pop homage band with Jame Iha, the guy from Fountains of Wayne and the drummer from Cheap Trick.

ZZ Top is making a record with Rick Rubin.

I mean, besides this cover

I subscribed to Rolling Stone magazine for about four years. I thought it was neat back in the day, being the first magazine that I actually paid to get every month. Now, to paraphrase Zack De La Rocha, there has been a rage building inside of me while reading this magazine of hypocrisy. If this was just another music magazine then it wouldn’t warrant so much of my attention. But this is Rolling Stone. The same Rolling Stone that was home to Hunter S. Thompson and Robert Altman.

I enjoyed Rolling Stone for a couple of years. The first album I ever bought was Ricky Martin’s self-titled album. So I wasn’t always into music, and Rolling Stone worked with that. They gave me all the advertisements and fashion stories that I couldn’t get from my television. Rolling Stone also exposed me to new bands, for which I am eternally grateful. There have been a few, but none more important to me than Kings of Leon (this is circa Aha Shake Heartbreak, before their sound was tainted by legions of screaming British teenagers).

Kings of Leon

Now, I love the Kings of Leon, and in my opinion they are the greatest southern band since Lynyrd Skynyrd. They renewed my faith in modern rock music. So, after Rolling Stone cried tears of joy all over their second album, Aha Shake Heartbreak, and ran a feature about their fashion, I decided to pick it up while it was still soaking wet. Needless to say, it was, and still is a great album. Now, after giving thanks, I have to wonder what the hell is going on in the minds of the people working at that damn magazine. I have pondered this, and the only solution I can come up with is that they don’t read back issues. They just put out the newest issue and erase what they have just written from their memories. Granted, they have many different writers working for them, but I think that a couple of editors wouldn’t hurt, if only for some sort of continuity (not counting their layouts, which, from a graphic design standpoint, have very little variety, but that is a topic for another time).

What am I talking about?

In Rob Sheffield’s review of the Kings of Leon’s 2007 offering, Because of the Times, he can’t help but drool over how great it is. I have no problem with that. I love the album. What I do have a problem with is his quick history of the band. He explains that they came onto the musical scene quickly and “they weren’t any good.” Hmmm… really? I wish somebody could explain to me why Rolling Stone gave their first album, 2003’s Youth and Young Manhood, four stars, the same as Because of the Times. If they weren’t any good then, why does their “best” album get the same rating as their “worst”? Also, a band that tours with Bob Dylan can’t be that bad, right? I mean, the big man himself said that listening to them play “Trani” (from their first album) was the most fun he had had in years.
Just because Rolling Stone hated Led Zeppelin and gave Nirvana’s Nevermind three stars (::cough:: less than Fall Out Boy’s Infinity On High ::cough::), does not mean that they lose all musical credibility. However, when Led Zeppelin are given an album cover as “The Heaviest Band of All Time” and Nevermind is in the top twenty of the “500 Best Albums of All Time“, then there is a problem. I mean, I personally think Nirvana peaked with Bleach, but saying that “Nirvana isn’t onto anything altogether new” would get anybody today at that magazine fired quicker than writing an article supporting Bush the second.

Some cruddy bands from like, forever ago

So, I hereby renounce my subscription to Rolling Stone and am currently without a magazine subscription in my name. That’s right, I am single now, and looking for a spicy new magazine that preferably focuses on music. And please, if you don’t like my opinion, please listen to Glenn Danzig, who has better reasons to hate the magazine. So, I leave you with words of wisdom on Rolling Stone from the Misfits frontman himself.

“It’s just an old hippie magazine who really love putting Beyoncé and Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera on their covers. So why would I care about a magazine like that? It is not a real music mag anyway.”

If you ever read this Rolling Stone…I would still work for you because I could do more damage inside the system.

NOTE: The Big Red Apple is now TheBigRedApple.net

To view this post at its new location click HERE!

I hope everyone is as happy to have a 4 day week as I am! Celebrate tonight by taking home arm loads of free clothes from Thrift On!, a crazy clothes swap at the Botanica Bar. There will be a DJ, comedy, contests and mayhem. Bring something you’re tired of and remember one person’s trash is another’s treasure.

On Tuesday Sam Mickens will be playing his “soul music for the present age” at Zebulon. Time Out New York says

Zs (say “zees”) combines cutting-edge contemporary classical with avant-rock, diluting neither style in the least. The trio’s hyperinvolved compositions and feverishly exacting performances make it essential listening for any enthusiast of either genre. Sam Mickens hails from visionary art-pop group the Dead Science.

I know I’ve mentioned this venue before, but I will reiterate that this is really the pinnacle of artsy hipsterness in Wburg.

On Wednesday I will be attending a preview performance of a new show called ‘Fire Throws’ at the 3LD Art and Technology Center. It’s a modern twist on the classic play Antigone, which makes it in my opinion the epitome of ‘Questionable Theatre.’ Naturally A and I are going and I expect it will either be amazing or awful; either way we are certain to enjoy ourselves immensely.

Fire Throws

If you aren’t as confident in your ability to laugh off potentially dreadful theater I encourage you to check out the Mixer Reading and Music Series at Cakeshop. Dare Dukes was the musical performer last time and I totally fell in love with his crooning city-folk style. It didn’t hurt that Dare is what my friend K would call ’sexy ugly.’ Actually he’ll be performing this Friday at Banjo Jims, so you can judge for yourself. This week the Mixer includes readings by Janice Erlbaum, Rob Sheffield and Melissa Seley and a musical performance by Allison Clancy. It should also be noted that not only is Cakeshop a great basement bar, it is also the purveyor of yummy pastries both vegan and otherwise.

On Thursday there will be another great literary event- the St. Mark’s Bookshop Reading Series at Solas. It was at one of these events that I heard Junot Diaz read from ‘The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’ and became an instant die hard fan. As someone who enjoys both Llosa and Kanye West this was probably bound to happen. This week Brian Evenson and Jesse Ball will be reading. It tends to be crazy packed so get there early, find a comfy couch and be prepared to be be wowed.

Also on Thursday ‘Handmade Music’ will be umm… exploding at 3rd Ward. If you can get yourself out there (if it’s not too cold) these events are always worth the trip. They involve a coming together of “geeksters and the geek curious” and are generally a truly un-godly racket and a very good time.

I’ll be posting about next weekend as awesome events come to my attention. Please bring any to my attention that you come across!

Ein feiner, kurzer Roman. Mixtapes haben wir schließlich alle aufgenommen und gehört – für ein Wochenende genau die richtige Lektüre und 1000 Gründe die alten Schubladen wieder aufzumachen und diese nach Tapes abzusuchen. Press Play.

When buying this book I have to admit I hid the cover and was a little ashamed. It felt a bit like I was purchasing a Cosmo magazine, or admitting that I watch “Grey’s Anatomy” (which I do). So when I first started reading this, I hated it and wanted my $13 bucks back, and cursed myself thinking that I must have been on my period (correct- no man can safely say that or should) or something akin to it. The book was a guilty pleasure, but initially not a pleasure. Now I’ve found that as I sat in bed trying to read myself to sleep, thinking I’d go for 5 minutes then be out like a light, I’m actually up an hour and twenty minutes longer because, well, I’m enjoying the read.

Sheffield writes about losing his wife but via telling of their shared love for music and describing his life in relation to certain mixed tapes. It’s not maudlin, and to me, it makes sense. I remember time based on albums and vice versa- I know, for instance, the the “Pretty In Pink” soundtrack is connected to my year in 6th grade, although I knew nothing of the Andie/Blaine type characters from the movie other than pining for the teen-love with my friends while listening to the album at a slumber party. I have taken cd’s out of rotation because of the various memories connected, just as I realized I still have albums entrusted to me by friends who distanced themselves from the tunes after a breakup (thinking Bjork’s Gling Glo, in particular- it popped up on my shuffle yesterday). So honestly I’m enjoying Sheffield’s casual pop-culture references as he remembers his life with his wife, before and after. At first the popped off yet self-effacing listings of how cool he (a Rolling Stone contributor) and his wife were (or rather happy, is what he seems to be driving at) felt cheap and forced, but once I let go of my skepticism for all-things-easy-to-consume (yes, it goes down like a Coke on a June day in Georgia, or some such other cliche), I found myself dog-earing pages with lines that I liked, and generally enjoying the style. It’s a quick easy read, but who says that leisure reading should be all literature (I’m not one to go for grocery store page turners, so perhaps I say). It is nice, for once, to breeze through something other than a magazine, something that does contain recollections and musings of loss, without having to stab oneself in the eyes (or heart) by slogging through something such as Didion. While her Year of Magical Thinking is on my “to read” list, it’s nice to see that a memoir does not have to be gut-wrenching to be a touching testament to love cut short too soon.

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
Love Is a Mix Tapeby Rob Sheffield

Loving Frank was a birthday gift from my best friend from high school, a genuine bibliophile and an all-around smart person. I knew I was going to like this one if I only let myself fall into it.

I have to admit, my experience of reading it was not my favorite: I had to do it on the sly, as I feel tremendously busy right now. So I read it in drips and drabs: a few pages before bed, or while I stood in the kitchen, waiting for water to boil for mac and cheese. I never felt like I had an afternoon to really lose myself in it. I never gave myself that luxury.

But really, that’s what this book asks of its readers: some devoted time to get lost in another time, a familiar time, but a distant time nonetheless. The story recounts Mamah Borthwick Cheney’s love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright in a time when sex scandals sold newspapers like crazy and reporters hounded celebrities at home, during private moments, whether it’s moral to do so or not (anyone else thinking of Eliot Spitzer? Balthazar Getty and Sienna Miller? Brangelina, for crissakes? Anyone? Anyone?) The part of the story in which Mamah and Frank were demonized and crucified for their extramarital affair and their desire to just belong to each other felt incredibly modern, current, and realistic. It wasn’t a wonderland of crazy sex and happiness: there was pain and regret and an awareness that they were making life-altering decisions not just for themselves, but for many people in their lives.

That said, there were a couple of things that bugged me:
–I could not stand reading Mamah’s name over and over and over again. It literally drove me nuts. I know it was her real name. I know there was nothing the author could do about it. But seriously–Mamah? It must be the ugliest name ever, and it really prevented me from imagining her as a lovely, intellectual woman. I got the sense that it bugged the author a bit too: the fact that she had to remind the readers how it was pronounced several times throughout the book, and the musings she put into Mamah’s head about it seemed to speak to her own feelings.
–The big surprise ending kind of blew me away. I will not describe any aspect of it. No spoiler alert necessary. However, I have to say that given that this was a fictionalized version of real events, I would have liked to have seen the author’s touch come in and foreshadow it a little. I see how this might have occurred to her, and why she might have rejected it: the characters involved had no foreshadowing of the events themselves in real life, so why should the author then place it in? Given how much of the rest of the book was so realistic–the emotions, the lack of romanticization, etc–it was an artistic touch the author likely deemed unnecessary. But when it happened, it hit me like a ton of bricks and made me wonder why I had spent so much time reading toward that particular outcome.

It could have been handled differently. Perhaps if the whole story itself had been a flashback imagined by some key characters as they were experiencing the fateful day described near the end of the book, the ending would not have been so shocking and disconnected from the rest of the narrative.

Despite these beefs, I enjoyed learning about FLW and Mamah’s slant on the feminist movement of the time. I’m totally psyched to go out and visit Falling Water now (the closest FLW building to me), and to get to see some of the kind of art described in the novel. And I respect the way the author imagined the story: the realism she brought to the emotional aspect of the story was very genuine.

Love Is a Mix Tape sat on my Amazon wish list for quite some time, and I finally got it for my birthday. It’s a quick read and an entertaining one, especially for someone of my generation–I think Rob Sheffield is just a few years older than me, and I definitely came of age in the era of mix tape creation.

He tells the tale of how music brought him together with his wife Renee, and how, once she passed away very unexpectedly, it became a torture and finally a healing salve for him. It’s a quirky story, filled with playlists and an indier-than-thou attitude. Rob has great taste in music for sure, and getting to see some of my own familiar favorites mixed in with new bands has, if nothing else, inspired me to spend some time on iTunes digging up some new songs with the book open. I found myself asking whether or not the role music played in the Sheffield’s life was really as important as he described it though. I’m pretty obsessed with music myself, but it seemed as though Rob and Renee were endlessly making mixes. Really? I found myself wondering at various points: Are there reallythat many hours in a week that one could spend creating these tapes, especially in a pre-mix cd world? Making tapes is a long process, a real-time process: if the tape is 90 minutes, it takes 90 minutes plus to make one. It seemed exaggerated.

Or maybe the time I spent watching Blossom reruns was the time they spent on mix tapes. Who knows?

The thing I loved best about the book was how Rob made Renee a very vivid character in showing details about her rather than telling them. Renee apparently was a girl who struggled with her weight, but Rob never comes out and says this: he describes her as incredibly beguiling, but as someone who spends a lot of time sewing her own clothes because she’s frequently needing larger and larger sizes. It’s a very loving way of describing what must have been a frustrating battle for Renee. Because he keeps his description focused on her action of sewing, I never lost sight of the sexy, head-turning (and probably thinner) girl he originally fell in love with. It was a gracious touch, and it made his devotion to her come through crystal clear.

I can’t imagine being as young as Rob was and having to bury a spouse. I can’t imagine building a life with someone and having it crumble in the space of an afternoon. I can’t imagine having to go back to an apartment after that particular loss and then figure out what to do next: going through her things, sleeping in the bed he once shared with her, getting rid of things and moving on. I’ve experienced a lot of loss in my life, but never one quite as visceral as Rob’s loss of Renee probably was. I love that he’s moved on. I love that music and writing and living are all still important and wonderful for him. It’s what she would have wanted–of course I didn’t know her, but it’s so clear from the text that she would have wanted him to go on, to love again, to be happy, to think of her fondly when he hears some certain song.

Loving and losing and loving again: when you’re in the middle of the loving part, the losing seems impossible, distant, ridiculous to even consider. And when you’re losing, the loving again seems sometimes sickening and sometimes as likely as winning the lottery. It’s such a cliche to dwell on the fact that life goes on but it does. It’s a minor miracle, but it does.