Piggies

It was the evening of the day that old stupidhead got his AHCA passed, and we were walking up Glisan Street in the Pearl District in downtown Portland, beautiful Portland. Suddenly, we heard a huge commotion, cheers, boos, a loudspeaker, and so forth.

gentrification kills kittens

“It must be a protest!” My cousin Alex said happily, making a beeline in that direction. “Let’s join in!”

“More likely it’s some event at one of these places advertising some kind of new Kale soda pop or something,” Jackson told us, trailing boredly behind with his girlfriend and my daughter.

And sadly, he was closer to the truth than his mother: the commotion was coming from an impromptu arena set up outside a brewery where a Cinco de Mayo celebration was ongoing, and it featured, not the bad rock band I feared, but a bevy of Alaskan racing pigs. Alas, no one was protesting the destruction of health care (and sanity) in America, not even in Portlandia; although it should be said that people did give little halfhearted boos to the poor little piggie that was named “Donald Trump.” They did not insist that it be made into bacon, instantly, but they also did not cheer it on.

So there’s that.

As the kids walked ahead of us on up to Buffalo Exchange and Powell’s Books, Alex and I – both of us journalists, both of us old enough to remember outrage, sanctimony (and laughter, LOL)  -- were given pause. We’d both wanted a protest, damn it. I can also remember when this exact neighborhood was full of old man bars and felt sort of dangerous to walk around in at night. It’s nice that it’s not anymore, and yet at the same time, the proliferation of kale soda and pig races, and of a society that takes part in them at the expense of protesting injustice, somehow seem implicated in the creation of the dark forces that are aligning in this country. The whole scene was like Animal House meets Animal Farm.

all animals are created equal but some animals are more equal than others

Indeed, Alaskan racing pigs are indeed a fitting allegory for the situation we are in now. First the pigs noodle around in a tiny pen all nudging one another out of the way, and then they are stuffed into little track suits and made to run around a course and jump a little hurdle, only to get their snouts into a feed bag at the end of it. There’s no real sport in it. They do what they’re told, like the patrons of the bar who believe it is necessary to celebrate Cinco de Mayo by cheering them on.

Those are kind of harsh thoughts, but I’ll be honest. This week has been tough. O n the way home from Portland, Caitlin asked me if I thought the phrase “Cinco de Drinko” is racist. I told her I don’t think so: I just think the whole concept of Cinco de Mayo is pretty wrongheaded and white-centered, not so much racist as racially awry, especially in this era when it is a pretty feeble counterpart to the anti-ethnic rhetoric and legislation that simultaneously blights our landscape. But I had to add that my opinion is worthless, as I have been censured a lot lately, if not for explicit racism, for somehow being implicated in a racist system that hires white people like me to teach about subjects like race and then lets them show movies like Gimme Shelter wherein a black person (Meredith Hunter) is killed by whites and then white students are asked to discuss it in front of black students, who don’t really like their remarks.

It turns out that might not have been a good move, on my part, pedagogically speaking. The question I asked was: “Are the Rolling Stones partially responsible for this young man’s death”? Here’s a  list of answers that I got:

1     1. Yes.

2.      2. No.

3.      3. The responsibility lies with the Hell’s Angels

4.      4. The responsibility lies with the individual Hell’s Angel who killed him

5.      5. The responsibility is embedded in issues to do with the era and the historical context.

6.      6. The responsibility lies with the victim who waved a gun in the face of a violent Hell’s Angel. (I believe the exact comment was, “What did he expect to have happen?”)

7.      7. The responsibility lies with the filmmakers, for colluding at a situation that was getting out of hand and then for callously displaying the death as spectacle, for, in Pauline Kael’s words,  producing an actual snuff film.

There are probably other answers that I’m forgetting, but those are the main ones, and if you’ve seen Gimme Shelter, you may have your own answer to this question. My personal  feelings are weighted well towards #1 (as you know if you’ve read my book Exile In Guyville, I have a complex love/hate relationship with the Rolling Stones, and anyway, Altamont was the Fyre Festival of 1969), but the point of teaching is not to tell the students what I think about it, it’s to explore (“unpack”) the range of options in a situation like this.

You can probably guess which answer caused the ongoing ruckus that we’ve had in my class all week – a drama which, now that I’m writing about it, I don’t think is unmerited. I mean, earlier in the week, Geoff had given a lecture in which he railed on the educational concept of ‘western civilization’ as one of the ideological underpinnings of both the Cold War and of our nationally ingrained racist policies in general. Perhaps he and I should not then have been surprised that later on the class rose up as one and said, ‘If this is so, why is our entire reading list written or made or by white people?”

That was our bad. It really was. Some of the damage was undone with a more fruitful lecture on Wattstax, and surely going forward into the hip hop era I can do a better job of shining a light on the opposition, rather than just exposing the disgusting nature of white America and then going, “Oh, whoops.”  In retrospect, I feel like showing Gimme Shelter at all was sort of my Cinco-de-Mayo moment, that is, a  time when  thought that I was being an ally, but actually I was being an aggressor.

Meanwhile, the pigs keep running around in that little pen getting nowhere, and the people, they keep cheering us on. Get it? The pigs are us; people. And the cheering masses are the forces of evil, getting more and more gleeful as the night goes on.

yep.

Girl on Fyre

I only had to take P.E. for one year, when I was in 7^th grade, and I hated its guts. Hey, this will date me: we had to wear actual rompers as gym suits, that is to say, our shorts had  elastic bands around the bottom, presumably so no one could see our knickers when we ran. To make matters worse, I had it first period, i.e. at 8 AM. Even in California it can be damned cold in the morning, but after some of us tried to wear our turtlenecks under our gym clothes, our teacher, Ms. Goode, bawled us all out: “That’s like wearing your bra OVER your clothing,” she said.

This was my gym suit. Srsly. Note how we didn't have heads then.

I had just turned eleven (having skipped a year in elementary school) and I didn’t even wear a bra yet, so I didn’t even have the slightest idea what she was talking about. “Why is it like that?” I asked my friend Debra, and she patiently explained the analogy to me.  I remember, during basketball, which we were never picked to play, we would sit on the trampoline in the gym and I would relate to her all the dirty parts of “The Exorcist,” which I had read and she had not. She  explained those bits to me as well. That was her role in my life at the time - as it was many years later, when she became a lactation specialist, and was forced into even more explication about bodily functions.

After 7^th grade I got a note excusing me from PE forever and ever because I was on the local swim club and did more than 10 hours of exercise a week, but I was thinking about PE the other day, because it struck me as I was reading the newspaper that Ms. Goode looked a lot like Melania Trump. No wonder Melania gives me the creeps.

Having worked in, or at least alongside, the music business, I feel like I’ve met a million Melanias, people for whom power and access is a primary motivation. Not everyone you meet in the business is like that – many are there because they love music – but there are enough of them to poison the well pretty thoroughly. Also, they aren’t just in the music business, and they aren’t only females. Wherever you are in the world, whether it is backstage at the Forum or in a baby nursing group at Kaiser, you will immediately recognize this type of person, because, to begin, they pretty much don’t like other women. If they’re women themselves, they view other women as competition. If they’re men, they view them as inherently powerless, and therefore lacking in anything worth having.

In fact, it might not be going too far to say that there are two types of people in the world, the type who are like that, and the type who are not, and the two types seldom mix socially.

this is what I wear to festivals too

I could be extrapolating needlessly but I think that the Fyre Festival in the Bahamas last weekend was filled with people who had that fundamental mindset. You know: that Festival that costs five figures to attend and you were supposed to get luxury beach lodgings, special food, all access passes and so on, just to see Blink 182. It is very hard for me to believe that anyone thought that was worth $12,500 but apparently such was the case. For one tenth of that, you can buy RT tickets to the Bahamas, a lovely brunch and a B and B on beautiful beach somewhere, so it’s hard to see where the value in the ticket was. 

According to this article in Vanity Fair, the festival's cachet was sold via posts made on social media by today’s supposed tastemakers. Therefore, buying a ticket was supposed to be buying a backstage pass to glamour. But there’s a fundamental problem with that idea. It’s all what Baudrillard would call a simulacrum – “that which conceals the truth.” And simulacrums usually get found out.

you say you don't want to live like a refugee?

So watching the Fyre Festival implode on social media was pretty much how I spent my weekend. At first, it was fun to think about: all these rich people stuck on an island in little tents eating cheese sandwiches, having preloaded all their money onto wristbands that didn’t work in town, etc. But it got depressing real fast. If you look even cursorily at the festival’s monetization plan, it exhibits a sort of greedy stupidity that characterizes last fall’s election as well. And I should know: I did my dissertation work on the rock festivals, and it is clearly the nadir of the form to date. In my scholarly work, I speculated that festival culture would become ideological state apparatuses, solidifying faith in capitalism through the false consciousness of music-based imagined communities. Instead, it seems to have devolved in exactly the same way as our current political scene: rather than focusing on music or even on ideology, this festival, like today’s political culture, is focused on the creation of brand, wealth, and ultimately, the homogenization of  experience. Today’s festivals provide proxy-spectacles for social and cultural capital, which in themselves are proxies for power and access.

 In short, the Fyre Festival’s failure is symptomatic of the vast misunderstanding that is under-girding all civic life right now. It reminds me of what someone oncecalled “the slutty allure” of a second order simulacrum.  Trump Presidency =  Fyre Festival = Boom.

the slutty allure of Green Day's simulacrum?

I know I am oversimplifying here. Festivals aren’t terrible. I have friends who love going to Coachella, and Burning Man, both of which are very expensive. I know that they like them because they see them as these temporary autonomous zones where they live outside the social hierarchies that make our lives such hell, and that is totally understandable. Yet the fact that these T.A.Z.’s are so expensive to participate in is problematic. It reminds me of a column I wrote in the original Fools in which I pondered why it is that the cheaper a concert is, the better. All my favorite concert experiences – and it’s true of festivals as well - have been extremely affordable, and if you think about your own experiences, I bet you’ll agree: the quality of a concert is almost in inverse proportion to its cost, and only Walter Benjamin knows why.

This is why I refuse to buy Hamilton tickets, by the way. I just feel like I can’t enjoy anything that expensive. One day ages from nowI’ll see Hamilton somewhere for a reasonable price and it will be fine, I’m sure. But it’s not some unrepeatable exclusive thing that I need to go into debt for. And I wonder: these days, what is?

doubt club

We were only a few miles outside of Olympia when the regrets began to set in. We were on our way to see the xx in Seattle, and Caitlin turned to me and said, “I am forcing myself not to say the words ‘I want to go home.’”

I knew just what she meant. I too had that deep knot of dread in my stomach, that sigh-full feeling that Seattle was just so far. I used to call it ‘club doubt.’ You know that feeling when it’s almost time to leave for the show and your couch or your bed beckons you lovingly back? That’s what club doubt is. Going out seems like so much trouble; so inadequate compared to the pleasures of reading a book (or paging through tumblr, if you’re Caitlin.)

It was ironic really. Because if anyone on earth would understand club doubt, it would be the xx themselves. Indeed, their music is like the soundtrack to club doubt. But what I learned in my long life is, however assailed you are by this feeling, you just have to force yourself.  So I said to Caitlin, ‘you won’t be sorry.’ And I meant it. However, briefly, it was hard to recall what our motivations for going to see the xx were, especially on a Monday night.

One reason was that, the day I looked into purchasing tickets, they were only $20 on Stubhub and hence, irresistible. Another reason was that the xx are one of the only bands that Caitlin and I feel almost the same about, i.e. we both really like them. (Sadly, according to Caitlin, no one else at her high school does. “They like Drake,” she says, witheringly.) A final reason: a few years ago, I read an article about a gig they did a site specific show in the Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City for forty people or something, where each song was designed to fit a different room configuration, and ever since I’ve wanted to see them. I thought it meant they would put a lot of care into their performance (although in fact I now think it may just have been another manifestation of their almost pathological shyness).

So there we were, together. It’s not very great that neither of us knows anyone else to go to gigs with; I personally believe that there is something very pathetic about the sight of a mother and daughter at a concert, but we have no choice. As with club doubt, you just have to push on through. So an hour later, after the quickest journey to Seattle ever, there we were at WaMu Theater, either outside or inside Century Link Field, I am not sure which.

First we staked our places.  My chosen place was seated about five rows up in the bleachers. Caitlin’s place was as close to the stage as she could get. During the somewhat dull opener (name redacted) this was easy, but at intermission tons of people flooded into the hall and began pushing and shoving their way forward. I know this, because we were in communication by text.

She: “There was almost a fight in front of me! B/cuz cutting.”

Me: “Put your elbows out and kind of biggen yourself. Like you’re supposed to do if you see a wildcat on a hiking trail.”

I had this sudden realization that this was possibly not the life skill I was supposed to be passing on to my child. But what the hell. Truthfully, going to shows alone isn’t the burden it used to be. Caitlin was easily able to cruise tumblr while she stood there. And the guy ahead of her was watching the Warriors.

“Find out the score,” I texted.

 “90 something,” she said. “But the guy seems upset.”

Upset? How could that be? Caitlin and I come from a world where it is totally unthinkable not to absolutely love the Warriors, so it took us a minute to remember they were playing Portland. I’m sorry, by that I meant, they were creaming Portland, up by 50.

steph.

She: “What is the plexiglass thing in front of the stage?”

Me: “IDK. Either they have see-through monitors, or it’s a giant sneeze guard like you see on a salad bar.”

As I said, the waiting is no longer the hardest part. Even so, we were happy when the lights came down and a host of cell phone screens rose up, like tiny stars on stalk like hands, to dot the darkness with square pinpricks of light. Normally I decry that loose garland of cell phones lights that surrounds the modern concert, but the xx seem to have planned for them. Their set was designed to be reflected back at us, so that when an aurora borealis of lights flooded the stage, the accompanying cell phones would sort of echo that in miniature around the edges of your eyesight. It was glorious.

photo by gina

And then, the music. I have long admired the xx for being one of the few bands with a distinctive sound – a sound that, like the Pixies, the Cocteau Twins, and Portishead, all of whom they remind me of a little bit, is pretty much un-repeatable. The xx don’t actually sound like any of the aforementioned bands, but there is some similarity nonetheless. They sound spare; sparse, even, and in this kind of setting, an enormous room, the contrast is arresting. They use the space between notes as well as the notes, and it resonates. Usually, it’s referred to as minimal, but to me it is the actual sound of timidity, only writ perfectly clearly, like a thin black line being dragged slowly across a white white wall. And since the xx write songs that seem to be for, by and about two people and two people only, it is sort of proper, as well; that is, the proper sonic interpretation of these little, tiny, emotional swells we sometimes have in microcosm, the sound, for instance, of small sad sentimental nights spent on your own, of club doubt, in all its agonizing rectitudinal wrongness.

The xx might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I have always loved a dualing boy-girl vocal. All my favorite bands have that sound, the Reivers, Glass Eye, the Go Betweens, the Bats, the Chills, the Fastbacks, you name it. It’s such a better thing to have than just the voice of one gender.  I can certainly appreciate a good singer-songwriter dude or lady, but at least on this one night, I thought, there ought to be a law that all bands must have dualing gender vocals. ALL OF THEM. Think how much better Fugazi would have been. Or the Replacements. Or even the Beatles or the Clash or the Ramones. Here: just click this link of a Bob Dylan song being done by Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoff. You know I’m right, right? I mean, what’s The Rolling Stones demonstrably best song? “Gimme Shelter.” Q.E.D.

All this I might have predicted from the xx's records. What surprised me about seeing them live – and it was apparent the minute they opened their mouths – was how damned good they are. Good as in talented: the musicianship, the singing, the extremely perfect aurality of it all. The sound is mesmerizing, but so is the performance. On paper one sees them as that rarest and most suspect of things, the drummer-led band, but in performance they aren’t quite like that. True, the set is surrounded by rotating mirrors (so it looks like the world’s largest changing room), which gives the effect that Jamie xx is about five different people, and hence, subtly reminds us of his centrality. But Romy and Oliver are extraordinarily, especially Romy. Shouldn’t she be more famous? She’s a little like Kate Bush crossed with St. Vincent, if both of them were stone cold introverts. That shit deserves some serious attention, rock scribes.

photo by caitlin

Despite the smallness of their ambitions, the xx are super professional now; this was a set that clearly came direct from Coachella. But even so, there is something really homey, and maybe even homely (in the German sense, ‘heimlich,’ familiar) and organic about their presence that is hard to describe. They are, dare I say it, visibly sincere. Caitlin, who was closer to the stage than I, said that they really seemed to be performing in a tiny club, making eye contact with the audience. At one point, Oliver said “We just played Coachella, and that was fantastic, but it’s so nice to see the audience up close.”

Later, both he and Romy shouted out Seattle for being their favorite place to play. One of them said, “We first played here eight years ago at Nuemos, opening for Friendly Fires, and no one knew us at all, and I will always remember how welcoming and warm Seattle was for us.” This jibes with my sense of Seattle as of a place where music is embraced in a really serious manner (for the contrasting view, see blog post called “Under the Marquee Moon”). I had not heard of the xx eight years ago, but I can easily imagine what they were like then, i.e. much like they are now, minus the giant light show. In Seattle, they would have been met with the exact same serious sincerity that they themselves exude so effortlessly. It would have been a beautiful thing to be at. 

As was this. Club doubt – vanquished again.