Looking For A Brighter Day

The media has dutifully reminded us that today is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. It’s understandable why: the media loves anniversaries because they are a form of ready-made news. Additionally, reporting on the event serves to maintain the illusion that the powerful corporations that own the media are both progressive and eco-friendly, that is, “concerned about the environment.” Around here, as usual – rather like the investors on Wall Street – most people went about their daily lives, the difference today being that many thousands of people around the country chose to drive their automobiles to gatherings where they joined others in advocating for action on climate change and energy reform . . . and then drove home again, all the while concerned about the passage of a new federal mandate regulating greenhouse gases. Nothing is got for nothing, Emerson shrewdly observed, meaning that for anything to be gained, something must be given up, that is, sacrificed. It’s easy to talk change when one actually has had to sacrifice nothing, nor has been required to do so. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with such practices, using high-efficiency outdoor lighting or loading up the washing machine hardly constitutes sacrifice.

As a boy, I grew up about five blocks from the J. Sterling Morton (1832-1902) home in Nebraska City, Nebraska. Morton himself, a politician originally from Michigan, had died decades earlier (he had served as President Grover Cleveland’s Secretary of Agriculture). After his death, for many years, his former Nebraska City mansion served as the summer home for his son, Joy Morton, a wealthy man who had founded the Morton Salt Company. By the time I was born, the Morton residence had become part of Arbor Lodge State Park, an ideal place for kids to play. Because it was a rather large, rolling expanse and heavily wooded, the Park offered ample opportunities for adventure. Moreover, you could tour the mansion for a mere ten cents, an activity I remember doing many times. Growing up as I did in Nebraska City, it was impossible to ignore the signs at the edge of town proudly proclaiming that Nebraska City was the home of Arbor Day. As is well known, Arbor Day was the creation of J. Sterling Morton, and political achievements aside, it remains his most enduring legacy. The first Arbor Day celebration took place in Nebraska on 10 April 1872, in other words, about a hundred years before the first Earth Day celebration. I see no reason to be suspicious of the official story behind the creation of Arbor Day: Morton believed strongly in the principle of conservation, perhaps inspired by the story of “Johnny Appleseed” (born John Chapman) and his deep reverence for the earth and the mythology surrounding the apple. Morton thought, no doubt correctly, that Nebraska’s landscape and economy would benefit from the large-scale planting of trees. Following Appleseed’s example, he began planting orchards (Nebraska City is known for its many apple orchards), shade trees, and windbreaks. He urged others to do the same. Eventually, as a consequence of Morton becoming a member of the Nebraska state board of agriculture, he proposed that a special day be set aside dedicated to tree planting and increasing awareness of the importance of trees. According to the arbor-day.net website, Nebraska’s first Arbor Day “was an amazing success. More than one million trees were planted. A second Arbor Day took place in 1884 and the young state made it an annual legal holiday in 1885, using April 22nd to coincide with Morton’s birthday.”

All 50 American states now have Arbor Day celebrations, although with varying dates in keeping with the local climate. Additionally, in 1970, President Richard Nixon proclaimed the last Friday in April as National Arbor Day. Hence, in contrast to Earth Day, Arbor Day, at least at the state level, encourages individuals to (re)enact the lesson of Johnny Appleseed, reproducing the occupation of the nurseryman. Earth Day requires nothing on the order of plant husbandry, which makes me wonder why it usurped the date originally designated for Arbor Day. In any case, in addition to whatever you did today in recognition of Earth Day, I recommend planting a tree or two. I did; two small Rosebud trees on the bank behind my house. I've always loved those trees, and so visited the local Earl May nursery and purchased a couple. They were small, but so much the better to watch them grow.

Incidentally, the title I gave to this blog comes from Gil Scott-Heron's poem, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” for reasons that by now should be clear: conservation is not something the media can truly encourage or influence. Earth Day, like any other anniversary, is merely a convenient and ready-made story that fills the space between commercials.

A Few Ecologically-Minded Tunes:
Crosby & Nash – Wind on the Water
John Denver – Rocky Mountain High
The Grateful Dead – We Can Run
Guided By Voices – Johnny Appleseed
Tom Lehrer – Pollution
Marvin Gaye – Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)
NOFX – Johnny Appleseed
The Pretenders – My City Was Gone
Quicksilver Messenger Service – Fresh Air
The Rascals – A Beautiful Morning
Pete Seeger – God Bless The Grass
Stephen Stills – Ecology Song
Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros – Johnny Appleseed

Weed Day

In case you didn’t know, yesterday, April 20th or 4/20, was “Weed Day.” 420 is, of course, a coded reference to marijuana use, and in order to observe properly the pot smokers’ national holiday, Walking Shadows released on DVD yesterday Reefer Madness: 75th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition (cover pictured). Originally released in 1936 as Tell Your Children, the film is celebrated as a classic of anti-marijuana propaganda, depicting innocent (i.e., naïve) high school kids being duped into trying marijuana by unscrupulous pushers. As a consequence of marijuana use, the teens are propelled down a road of vice and—given the fact that such cautionary films are inevitably plotted as an apocalyptic sequence, as a Platonic deviation from the Good—death. Happily, Walking Shadows’ Collector’s Edition includes several bonus shorts, including High on the Range (originally released as Notch Number One, 1924), Betty Boop in Happy You and Merry Me (1936), Marihuana: Sins of Youth (1936), That Funny Reefer Man (1936), the feature length Marijuana: Threat or Menace? (1939), Hemp for Victory (1942), The Pusher (1951), and other shorts. If anyone is interested, several months ago I compiled a chronology of the rise of cannabis culture, available here. But remember: If you smoke it...You will  GO INSANE!

Beyond Good and Elvis

The word fan is the shortened form of the word fanatic, from the Latin word fānāticus, an individual belonging to a particular temple, from fānum, meaning temple. The fanatic, in contrast to the dilettante—someone having only a casual or superficial interest in an art or discipline, a “dabbler”—is characterized by excessive (obsessive) enthusiasm and deep, uncritical devotion to an art or discipline. I claim no original insight in the observation that the investment of deep emotional energies in a particular person or object—what Freud called cathexis—reveals that fanaticism is actually a form of fetishism.

The connection of fanaticism and fetishism is conveniently revealed in a video currently available on youtube.com that I consider required viewing for anyone interested in the phenomenon, consisting of an excerpt from Thomas Corboy’s short documentary Rock ‘n’ Roll Disciples (1986). A range of Elvis fans are interviewed, including Artie Mentz (an Elvis impersonator), Jenny and Judy Carroll (identical twins who believe they may be Elvis’s illegitimate offspring), and Frankie “Buttons” Horrocks, who has devoted her life to the witnessing and the celebration of Elvis. There’s a moment in the video during which Horrocks observes that no true female Elvis fan denies her deep desire to have had sex with Elvis. As she speaks, she is shown posing with the Elvis statue now standing in Memphis, her hand firmly gripping its crotch. Greil Marcus observes the image “is reminiscent of nothing so much as the statues of Catholic saints that in present-day Europe good Christian women straddle in pagan ecstasy, telling anyone who asks that their mothers said it was a good way to ensure fertility” (Dead Elvis 119)—that is, the image reveals the nature of the relationship between the fan and the fetish object.

Cowry Shell

Simon Frith has observed that music “is more like clothes than any other art form” (Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music, 1996), suggesting, among other things, how the consumption of music can be considered a fashion statement, that is, as a statement of taste. But what can we say of music about clothes? Legend has it that Carl Perkins, upon hearing the story of the prized pair of blue suede shoes, was chagrined that a man actually would value his lowly shoes over a beautiful girl. Put in another way, Perkins wondered how it is possible that a signifying object (even one possessing materiality, such as a pair of blue suede shoes) could provide even the partial satisfaction of the instinctual object (a beautiful girl). The paradox certainly confounded Freud as well, and would seem to be the primary reason for Freud’s interest in fetishism, especially in those cases where the fetish is unrelated to the instinctual object by metonymy, e.g., when a cowry shell, for instance, is more mysterious to the fetishist than the female foot. Unlike the cowry shell, though, at least the shoe is metonymically related to the foot. The paradox is why the shoe should have more affective import than the foot. The psychiatric literature describes broadly two kinds of fetishes: the form fetish, in which the object and its shape presumably is the most important, such as the high-heeled shoe or spiked boot; and the media fetish, in which the material out of which the object is made carries the affective import, such as (blue) velvet or leather or lace, the case with the majority of the songs below. In some instances the actual nature of the fetish is ambiguous, as in Dylan’s “Boots of Spanish Leather” – form, or media fetish? The ambiguity reveals the limited analytical value of the form-media distinction, as it tells us nothing whatsoever about the meaning of the fetish itself. In any case, in each of the songs listed below, the peculiar nature of the sexual fetish is transformed into a public spectacle by the singer, and the fetish object is both celebrated and made explicit.

A Few Explicit Fetishes:
Joe Bennett and the Sparkletones – Black Slacks
Tony Bennett – Blue Velvet
Big Bopper – Chantilly Lace
Dee Clark – Hey Little Girl (In the High School Sweater)
David Allan Coe – Angels in Red
Derek and the Dominos – Bell Bottom Blues
Bob Dylan – Boots of Spanish Leather
The Eagles – Those Shoes
Brian Hyland – Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini
The Hollies – Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress
Kenny Owen – High School Sweater
Carl Perkins – Blue Suede Shoes
Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels – Devil With A Blue Dress On
Rod Stewart – You Wear It Well
Royal Teens – Short Shorts
Conway Twitty – Tight Fittin’ Jeans

Steal This Blog

Some may remember puppeteer Shari Lewis’s children’s show, Lamb Chop’s Play-Along, that aired on PBS from 1992-97. At the end of the show, Charlie Horse, Lamb Chop and the other puppets would start singing “The Song That Never Ends,” a recursive (“loopy”) and self-referential song consisting of a single verse that repeats over and over. The lyrics are as follows (although individual flourishes are allowed):

This is the song that doesn’t end,

Yes, it goes on and on, my friend.

Some people started singing it, not knowing what it was,

And they’ll continue singing it forever just because . . . [repeat]

In art and literature, self-referentiality is sometimes referred to as self-reflexivity, occurring when the artist or writer refers to the work in the context of the work itself – as does “The Song That Never Ends.” There are many children's songs that privilege recursivity and self-reflexivity, but there are also many great examples of self-reflexive pop songs as well. Perhaps the most well known of these songs is Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” in which she sings, “You probably think this song is about you.” Another is Steely Dan’s “Deacon Blues,” when Donald Fagen sings, “I cried when I wrote this song/Sue me if I play too long.” My favorite illustration, though, is probably Neil Young’s “Borrowed Tune,” from Tonight’s the Night:

I’m singing this borrowed tune

I took from the Rolling Stones

Alone in this empty room

Too wasted to write my own

In the 60s self-reflexivity was often employed as a form of culture jamming, the act of defamiliarizing signs and slogans in order to disrupt habitual, or largely uncritical, patterns of perception and consumption. A famous example of culture jamming from the era is Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book, published in 1971 (pictured), which, ironically, sold extremely well, primarily because much of the book offered advice on how to survive with little or no money. There have been entire albums created based on the principle of culture jamming; one of the most singular is The Residents’ The Third Reich 'N' Roll (1976), consisting of defamiliarized versions of Top 40 radio hits of the 1960s. Not all self-reflexive pop songs have such a radical agenda, of course, but all have the effect of disrupting the usual, that is, habitual, patterns of communication.

A Self-Reflexive Play List:
Edward Bear – Last Song
Elton John – Your Song
David Allan Coe – You Never Even Called Me By My Name
Arlo Guthrie – Alice’s Restaurant
Pink Floyd – Mother
Public Image Ltd. – This Is Not A Love Song
Carly Simon – You’re So Vain
Steely Dan – Deacon Blues
James Taylor – Fire and Rain
The Who – Gettin’ In Tune
“Weird Al” Yankovic – Smells Like Nirvana
Neil Young – Borrowed Tune

Pop Guns

On 17 April 1983—twenty-seven years ago today—Felix Pappalardi was shot and killed by his wife, Gail Collins Pappalardi. Charged with second-degree murder, she claimed the shooting of her husband was an accident. Although Pappalardi is perhaps not well remembered today, in the late 60s he produced three of Cream’s four studio albums, and later founded the band Mountain with guitarist Leslie West (“Mississippi Queen”). While reminding us of the ubiquity of the gun in American culture, the domestic context of Pappalardi’s death should also remind us of the story of Cain and Abel. As Michael Jarrett has observed, when popular musicians “recast the Cain-and-Abel story as public spectacle, they also confirm the pleasures of sublimated violence in their music” (Sound Tracks: A Musical ABC 136). In all of the following songs, the violence is pretty close to the surface, allowing the singer to verbalize or own up to a murderous intent or action.

Blame It On Cain:
Aerosmith – Janie’s Got A Gun
Black Velvet Flag – I Shot JFK
Johnny Cash – Folsom Prison Blues
Steve Earle – The Devil’s Right Hand
Bobby Fuller Four – I Fought The Law
Pat Hare – I’m Gonna Murder My Baby
The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Hey Joe
The Kingston Trio – Tom Dooley
The Louvin Brothers – Knoxville Girl
Nas – I Gave You Power
Gene Pitney – The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Kenny Rogers and The First Edition – Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town
The Rolling Stones – Midnight Rambler
Bruce Springsteen – Nebraska
The Wailers – I Shot the Sheriff
Hank Williams, Jr. – I’ve Got Rights
Neil Young – Down by the River