Archive for March, 2011

Don’t You (Forget About Parentheses)

Posted: March 27, 2011 in music, Record reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
7

“Don’t You (Forget About Me)”
Simple Minds
1985

Today I want to have a word with you about guilty pleasures, which, for the purpose of this disquisition, we shall define as enjoying things that you might be too embarrassed to enjoy if anyone found out you were enjoying them. I’m thinking here, just to get the ball rolling, of people who go roller skating because they like the way “You Made Me Love You” sounds on the Wurlitzer. Then there are the folks who eat Pop-Tarts without toasting them first. As for me, I listen to Simple Minds.

On page 160 of my copy of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, the dysfunctional wolverines who work at Championship Vinyl have compiled a list of the top five bands they want to put in front of a firing squad. Simple Minds leads their list, ahead of even Genesis, which seems harsh to me. Genesis spawned Phil Collins. Can you name even one simpleton in Simple Minds? How about the chap who was married to Chryssie Hynde? Of course you can’t. And if you can you probably work at Championship Vinyl.

Sanctify Yourself
Simple Minds supposedly took their name from David Bowie’s “Jean Genie.” The relevant line in that song, “He’s so simple-minded he can’t drive his capsule,” is meaningless out of context and is uninspiring even if you know what Bowie was talking about, which I don’t. Simple Minds was part of the 1970s-’80s movement loosely known as New Wave, which tried to mesh art and post-punk. In fact Simple Minds started out in life as a punk outfit called Johnny & The Self-Abusers, which immediately leads me to inquire why they thought they needed a new name.

Like many New Wave bands, most of Simple Minds’ songs are hopelessly airy and artsy. This is probably why I like them. I even like the singer, Jim Kerr (Ms. Hynde’s former husband), who is Scottish but who always sounds vaguely German.

Life in a Day
Objectively, I would have to rank Simple Minds far below expert practitioners of the New Wave form, such as Echo & The Bunnymen and The Psychedelic Furs, but way above Spandau Ballet, Human League, and Haircut 100, three bands that together couldn’t make a snake out of Play-Doh. This leaves Simple Minds with the same artistic command of their material as A Flock of Haircuts, who were best known for their haircuts.

But that’s my objectivity speaking. Every time I play one of my favorite Simple Minds cuts, I melt into a puddle. Like The Tubes, I can’t clean up/but I know I should.

Promised You a Miracle
In 1985, when Simple Minds were making a good living in the UK but were still unknown in the US, the band was hired to perform a song for an upcoming film: The Breakfast Club. The boys were handed the words and music to something called “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” did some rearranging, and recorded a 4-minute and a 6-minute version, both on the same afternoon.

I’ll bet Simple Minds didn’t think about this song again until the movie came out and “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” went to #1 on the US charts and became an anthem. Suddenly, Simple Minds were famous in the world’s biggest music market for a song they didn’t write. They didn’t even include it on an album until 1992.

I understand why it took them seven years to finally claim this song. Have you ever read the lyrics?

Tell me your troubles and doubts
Giving me everything inside and out and
Love’s strange so real in the dark
Think of the tender things that we were working on

That’s quite enough. And if you own the original 45, I suggest you not play the B side, “A Brass Band in Africa.” Simple Minds wrote this one, but listening to it is like eating a Pop-Tart before it’s toasted or even unwrapped.

Up on the Catwalk
Though the words to “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” are, well, awful (and the 6-minute version has even more of them), and though the thing is too slow to dance to, the music wields a crowd-pleasing power. Like all immortal songs, it begins with a musical flourish you instantly recognize and lyrics anyone can handle:

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!
OoooooooooooooOOOOOooooooooooooooOOoooOOOOOOh

The song’s helium-filled synthesizer musings are ballasted by a steady beat and a chorus that would break the heart of any teenager or immature adult:

Don’t you, forget about me
Don’t don’t don’t don’t
Don’t you, forget about me

And then comes the moment of genius, when Simple Minds rose above themselves and created matter out of energy with their bare hands. At 3:13 most of the music falls away, leaving only the synth, which is playing somewhere in low Earth orbit, the muted drums, and Jim Kerr muttering on behalf of the lovelorn:

Will you walk away?
Will you walk on by?
Come on – call my name
Will you call my name?

For 30 seconds we’re suspended in time and space, anticipating that delicious moment when the triumphant drum roll crashes in. After that it’s a walk in the park. Anyone can sing along, because from here to the finish line it’s just La. La la la la. La la la la. La la la LA la la la la la etc. Audience participation; that’s the ticket!

I’ve run out of Simple Minds song titles
But I’ll never run out of opinions. I’m declaring “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” as the iconic song of the 1980s, the one song that can represent the entire decade. I think the only serious competition comes from Special D’s pick, Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” and I have to admit this would’ve been an even closer race if Ms. Lauper had been backed by a genre-defining movie.

Will we ever see the likes of Simple Minds again? Unfortunately, yes. They’re still recording. They’ve even inspired a band to carry on their work, and that band is called Coldplay. We’ll talk about them the next time we tackle guilty pleasures.

Wouldn’t you love to hear “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” on a Wurlizter?

Golden Oldies vs. golden retrievers

Posted: March 21, 2011 in Miscellaneous, music
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
4

Let’s give a big Run-DMSteve welcome to today’s contestants:

Golden Oldies: Radio programming.
Golden retrievers: Dogs.

Are you ready to rumble?

Golden Oldies
In 1966 my parents gave me my own radio, with a primitive earbud. They were sick of listening to my music on the family radio, which sat on the kitchen counter beside the bread box. Looking back, I can understand what Mom and Dad were up against. My musical sensibilities at the age of 11 were the equivalent of Lady Gaga and the Jonas Brothers. Who wants to listen to Herman’s Hermits and the tragic story of Mrs. Brown and her lovely daughter?

When I was 11, I certainly did, and when I got to see Herman’s Hermits in concert for a friend’s birthday I was thrilled. But before my 5th-grade colleagues and I could sing along to “I’m Henry the VIII, I Am,” we had to survive the opening act: The Who. (They weren’t famous yet, at least not on this side of the Atlantic.) What followed was, by the standards of that era, full-blown insane flying carnage. Fun!

Wherever you are today, Mrs. M., I’d like to thank you for not taking us home early, though I plainly remember your shock, particularly when the audience was hit by drum sticks and guitar shrapnel.

As the 1960s continued, The Beatles and The Who became more experimental and The Rolling Stones more savage. Other bands followed. Radio stations sprang up to play this music (the first “alternative” outlets). In the early 1970s I noticed that there were other stations, usually on the AM side, that were still playing Herman’s Hermits and similar bands. They didn’t seem aware of Sgt. Pepper’s or Tommy or Beggar’s Banquet. Their playlists stopped in the mid-’60s, and they included songs from a decade I knew nothing about: the 1950s, which in my mind meant crooners (Frank Sinatra) and cool jazz cats (John Coltrane).

As we moved into the 1980s and I learned more about the history of pop music I realized that Golden Oldies radio wasn’t just something I listened to when I didn’t like what was playing on the other stations. Golden Oldies was cultural propaganda, like Fonzi and Happy Days. All of the ’50s music these stations played was white-washed white pop. The only black artists I remember hearing* were Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Bo Diddley – and by the time we moved into the ’90s, Bo Diddley had disappeared and the other three were restricted to a song or two each.

What about all the other black R&B artists? What about rockabilly? What kind of country is this where we have to learn about our heritage from Led Zeppelin?

Today, in 2011, even that remnant of the 1950s is gone. The Golden Oldies songbook begins in the early ’60s with The Beach Boys and The Beatles. Jan & Dean and The Everly Brothers have vanished. Golden Oldies extends into the early 1980s now, and though blacks and women have been allowed into the club (no soul, no Golden Oldies), this format continues to perpetuate atrocities. Where else are you going to hear Chicago, The Dooby Brothers, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and Bread? Excuse me while I rinse my brain out.

* Not counting doo-wop. I’m not sure that doo-wop is music.

Golden retrievers
Golden retrievers love chasing tennis balls. They love standing around chewing tennis balls. They love you. They love whatever you’re doing. They would never ever rewrite musical history or suppress music created and performed by women, minorities, or gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered individuals. They wouldn’t make me listen to Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park.” And if I secretly played “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daugher,” they wouldn’t tell.

Winner: Golden retrievers. W00T! (And w00f!)

Thank you for the birds

Posted: March 6, 2011 in Miscellaneous, music
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
12

Captain Frederick Kent Dezendorf, 1914-2011

My father-in-law passed away quietly in his sleep this week, in his house on the beach in Florida. When the morning sun rose, he didn’t. Capt. Dezendorf had stood his last watch. He was 96.

I hardly know where to begin with this guy. He was a seventh-generation son of Brooklyn. His family goes so far back in U.S. history that the British still owe them for several ships they swiped a couple hundred years ago. He went to sea not because of his ancestors, however, but because he loved to read. Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood and other sea stories set him on his life’s course.

Fred became an officer on the former Grace Line’s cruise ships, where he met the adventurous young woman, Ginny, who became his wife. She was a stewardess. It was 1940 and for their honeymoon they toured the West in a borrowed car.

These were the people who crushed the Nazis
When the U.S. entered World War II, Ginny drove an ambulance in New York City and Fred captained Liberty ships. He was 27. He crossed the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean in convoys on pitch-black nights that might suddenly be torn by explosions, sirens, and gunfire. In the morning one of the convoy’s ships would be gone. Or two or three or five. The survivors closed the gaps and kept sailing.

Fred was the captain of the Peter Minuit when they developed engine trouble and fell out of formation. A British destroyer kept them company. The Peter Minuit’s crew had to turn off the engines to work on them. As twilight came down their escort had to return to the convoy. Imagine yourself in the place of this young man, standing on your bridge, on your helpless, drifting ship, as the destroyer disappeared into the gloom and a lone voice called back, “Good luck, Petuh…” Sometime in the dark early hours, they got the engines running, and soon they rejoined their convoy. Just another day in the Merchant Marine.

It’s a Great Life
As the war ended, Fred became a pilot on the Panama Canal. He also worked for a time for a shipping company in Venezuela. In the 1950s, Fred moved his family back to New York and took a job as a deckhand for Moran Towing. By the time he left in 1964 he was their general manager.

After a few years as the harbor master in Woods Hole, Massachusetts (where he moonlighted as the driver of the Martha’s Vineyard ferry), he and a partner founded the pilotage at Port Canaveral, Florida. Fred had always loved to work, from the time he was a child helping to support his family by tying up packages at the A&P, and he continued as a pilot until he was 70 – climbing ladders up the sides of ships in the middle of the night to get to the bridge and bring the ship safely into port.

He always said that he’d been lucky. Early on he had found exactly what it was he wanted to do with his life.

In his 26 years of retirement, Fred twice drove across the country in his van with his two Norwegian elkhounds, once going all the way to Alaska. He wrote his life’s story, which he called It’s a Great Life. He loved bird-watching and he passed that love on to Special D, who once wrote to him to say, “Thank you for giving me the birds.” He enjoyed repeating that.

Heaven’s a little closer in a house by the sea
Fred stayed in his home right to the end, with nothing really wrong with him. He was just very old. Shipboard accidents couldn’t kill him. Hitler couldn’t kill him. Falling down a flight of stairs at 82, bashing his head open, and being found the next day by neighbors, with a blood pressure reading of zero over zero, couldn’t kill him. In his last years he slept more and more and mostly fell silent. But when he sat in his accustomed chair by the window with a view of the Atlantic, and someone put on some big band music, he still tapped his foot.

The day after his death, Moran’s Florida tugs flew their ensigns at half-mast – and Fred hadn’t worked for Moran in 46 years.

Fred was predeceased by his parents, his two brothers, and his wife. He is survived by one sister, five children, six grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, one cat, and a thousand stories of courage and resourcefulness that he always told with style and self-deprecating humor. No one loved a good story with a good laugh more than he did, even if the laugh was on him.

Fred’s ashes will be scattered at sea, as he had scattered Ginny’s. If you’re of a mind to mark the passing of this extraordinary man, please make a donation in his memory to your favorite library or to the American Merchant Marine Veterans Memorial Committee. Or give a dish of rum-raisin ice cream to your favorite dog.