It was at the p-p-Paradise. Last time I was here, I had just graduated high school and was seeing Ben Jelen. (Check him out; he's not terrible.) He played the Lounge and there were fewer than forty people present. It was still a good time and afterward, we had a super-awkward conversation -- as only Ashley the Awkward is capable of! -- and I finallllllly got my picture with him.*
*It was, bien sur, the second meeting. The first time I met him, he was opening for Hanson, which is how I convinced Courtney to join me. I forgot my name but remembered to tell him he looked like Jackson Browne. When he asked who that was, I told him he was an old man. Because, yes, I'm that cool. Our second conversation was less awkward because I didn't forget my name, at the very least.*
But Todd. Well, I've been listening to him since 1994. When my mom took the boys to hockey practice, I would put a CD in the stereo and rock out in my socks. Usually, it was James Taylor, Mudslide Slim. Because you cannot deny that James Taylor had it right when he said there's nothing like the sound of sweet soul music to change a young lady's mind. Anyway, I'd blast the James Taylor for the duration of hockey practice. But more pertinent to my story is the fact that it eventually became Todd Snider that I listened to. Not right away, but eventually. I listened to him a lot with my parents, but he didn't become a solo staple until halfway through Viva Satellite.
In eighth grade we had to make music videos. Allison and I made our music video to the song "Joe's Blues" and dressed entirely in black. I played a bongo, Allison played the keyboard, and we got a guy (Derek) on bass. Every other student in the class sat on the risers behind us and snapped and swayed in time to the music. Miss Montgomery (who once dated Bill Nye, the science guy!) declared it the BEST music video ever produced in her music class. It was epic, at least, and legendary. There's something eighth graders love about the line, "The eyes in the room, they're all looking at the stars./The butts are all shaking to the bass guitar."
It's a pretty awesome song.
I've seen video clips of him at shows, through Eighteen Minutes, and he's funny. I was expecting it. Sort of. Last year, he played at Johnny D's with Don Was and I was going to go, but my stupidfinalsweredue. So when Mom and the TallOne met him after his set, Mom convinced him to call me and leave a message. I woke up to a voicemail that said, "Hey, Ashley. This is Todd Snider. I'm here with your mom. We're just having a few drinks and hanging out." It was pretty spectacular.
So last night, I figured if I met him, I'd tell him about my eighth grade music video. Maybe ask him to send a message to my little brother at Bonnaroo. (Don't make bad choices -- perhaps?) But that would not come to pass. Alas. (The TallOne is a grumpy old man sometimes, by which I mean usually, and if it had been Mom and Judy they'd have waited. The night was beautiful, after all.)
K-Jackson Browne and I drove in to the T, where I realized I had forgotten my ID, so we turned around and went to get it. Then we went in, getting in just quarter-to-nine-ish. David Zollo played the first set. He was good, though TallOne leaned in to inform that he thought he was Leonard Cohen because he had a chorus that included the word "Hallelujah." He sort of looked like my professor, if my professor was an Iowa-bred singer-songwriter at least twenty years younger. Cool hat, though. Works better on him than on Jesse Malin. I had to check the score of the Sox game, K-Jackson Browne wanted to know how the Penguins were doing, so we escaped mid-set, guiltily, to check those in the bar-area. Where they had TVs. It was literally a bunch of guys standing around watching both games on the huge TVs, beers in hands, hats on heads. (Sox won the game, 5-2, I think, in the 13th inning.) As K-Jackson Browne pointed out, we were the only two girls hanging out with a bunch of guys, because we're that kind of girl. We returned and the man sitting beside me continued to sit thigh-to-thigh. PERSONAL SPACE. I felt like I should fling my arms out and spin around. "I need this much breathing room at all times."
INTERMISSION.
Finally. Todd. Only fifteen years after the first time I wished to see him live and in concert. I loved his checkered shirt (as checkered as his past, I'm sure... God, I'm awful) and his polka-dotted tie. Because K-Jackson Browne knows how I feel about polka dots. But the best thing about his outfit?
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| From He's Just Not That Into You |
"Because it's hard to kick the door down, when you ain't got no shoes"
He started off with some new songs and banter. No one does stage banter better than Mr. Snider, I can assure you of that. Also, his mid-song rewrites are a testament to the timelessness and wide appeal of his songs. His lyrical prowess is unrivaled by anyone writing now, I would dare say. Some writers, as Greil Marcus will point out, are too terribly blunt with their points of views. And Todd is blunt. He's about as subtle as "Why is impeachment not on the table?/We gotta stop them while we are able." (A line that, to be fair, inspired my one foray into the slam poetry world... a rousing success that I might just share with you some day.) But he's nuanced, which is something I think that Greil Marcus would appreciate. On "Bring 'Em Home," he really turns the phrase on its side and understands that when we chant "Bring 'em home," as we should be chanting with every breath, we're not talking simply about the soldiers. They'll be bringing home everything they have seen, everything they have done, every loss they have endured, and every loss they have inflicted. These are the scars of war, the things that come home from war. You cannot bring 'em home without bringing 'em home. And goddamn if Todd doesn't nail it.
He's also not completely niave about the way things work, about how important his own voice is. One thing Todd Snider is careful to point out, always, is that he doesn't share his opinions because he thinks he's right. Oh, forget it. I can never hope to explain half so well as the man, himself:
Lately, my friends have been telling me that my songs have gotten more and more opinionated. So I wanted to let you know before we finish this music, that while over the course of this music I may share some of my opinions with you, I don't share them with you because I think they're smart of because I think you need to know them; I share them with you because they rhyme. I did not do this to change your mind about anything. I did this to ease my own mind about everything. (From "Ponce of the Flaming Peace Queer," off the album Peace Queer.)I found his" That's what scares people these days" from the song "Tension" particularly interesting. "Gay people getting married: that's what scares people who don't have fuck-all else to be scared of, these days." And I ask you rational, thinking people -- ain't that the truth?
I won't let this turn into a debate about the rights of an oppressed minority group. This isn't about gay rights; this is about Todd Snider. Though it so often becomes about politics with him. Interesting that in high school I showed the cartoon video for "Conservative, Christian, Right-wing, Republican, Straight, White American Male" to Mike and he laughed out loud in the middle of historical research. Even Davidson laughed, if I recall correctly. That song was pretty much a perfect summary of our respective stereotypes. (Mike campaigned for Barack. Didn't merely vote for him, but actively campaigned. Awww, my little conservative is getting so liberal... my icy cold heart might just be melting.)
Observe:
Todd, like my boy Jackson, opened the floor to recommendations after a certain point and he played "DB Cooper," one of my favorite songs. I wish he had played "Some Things Are" and "Barbie Doll," because as much as I love Jack I, I love Todd's version oh-so-much more. Or "Vinyl Records."
You would not believe how many odd looks I got in George Square [in the 'Burgh] because I was singing out loud to "Vinyl Records." I must sound like a crazy person to other people. Rocking in the aisle to my inside song, people staring at me think I got a walkman on? (Come on, you know what it's from.) But I got Willy, Waylon, and Woody Guthrie. Jimmy Buffet, Lyle Lovett, and Bobby Gentry. I could go on; this song is the folk-country version of that old Evacuation Day staple, "Johnny McEldoo." Just don't get me started or I'll never stop until I get to the end.
The thing about Todd Snider is that he's smart. He's too smart for Mensa, or football, or "that old main stream." His lyrics are smart. Too smart for most people. Isn't that the way it works? People are so easily intimidated these days, so we settle for Keith Urban or Adam Lambert or Britney-friggin-Spears, for Chrissakes, because people like Todd Snider just remind us that we're really not as smart as we like to think we are. (I'm not saying that music doesn't have its place, but you don't eat JUST cotton candy and expect to be healthy, do you?)
When I encounter lyrics like what Todd writes, how can I help but feel inferior? You take the lyric:
Sky full of birds in a flying V,I've never written anything like that and I probably never will. Todd is to music what people like Ben Shahn were to photography. People like Arthur Rothstein and Russell Lee, you take their photographs and make music about them -- that music is going to sound an AWFUL lot like Todd Snider. Todd Snider is every "Untitled" image in the FSA archives.
Moving down through Tennessee,
Look a little like you and me, you know.
One morning, I brought in a burned CD to supplement Michael Lesy's morning music mix (not that is could really be improved upon... I love me some Linda Rondstadt) but I thought he might like Todd. And I was right. Michael requested a copy of the CD, in fact. So congrats on winning over Lesy, Todd. I know how hard that can be and you did it without even trying.
If I had to choose a photograph to sum about how I feel about Todd Snider music it would be this Ben Shahn photograph, untitled, taken in October, 1935 in Little Rock:
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| From He's Just Not That Into You |
[That's actually from the RoJo section of my project for Lesy, the one I was working on when Todd Snider left me that infamous voicemail. The one that made working on finals seem not so terrible because, omigod, Todd Snider is such a nice guy!]
So people stay away because they can't help but be afraid of people who make them see themselves for the absurd beings that they, in fact, are. We're not a terribly self-aware bunch, we humans. But individually, some of us are. Vonnegut. My junior year history teacher. Oscar Wilde. Todd Snider. And these people threaten the balance. They threaten the whole idea that we are each of us the most beautiful, the most talented, the most stunningly intelligent people. As Todd Snider has been known to sing, "They say 3% of people use 5-6% of their brains. 97% use just 3% and the rest goes down the drain. I'll never know which one I am, but I'll bet you my last dime 99% think they're 3% 100% of the time." Todd Snider is smarter than you. Isn't that scary? A bare-foot, folk-singing hippie is smarter and more self-aware than any of the members of Mensa I've met, any of the literate sailors, most of my college professors, and basically my entire generation. He's also way less pretentious, self-involved, self-important, or narcissistic than anyone I've ever met. (If you're wondering how I know that, since I've never met the guy, I'll put it to you this way: he was mugged once outside a show and wrote a song about it. Not from the perspective of himself, the mugged, but the perspective of the other guys, the muggers. He manages to imbue them with a strange humanity and make the listener sympathetic to these helpless, hopeless thugs. Could you do that?)
I'm not scared; I'm glad.
Did I ever mention that I have discovered I love all things even slightly honky-tonk? I'm so East Coast in most ways, but I swear to JamesDean, I've got a bit of the country in my blood and I'm not sure where it came from. I know my parents enjoy the occasional foray into country, but I have learned so much about myself in the past, say, fifteen months. Since, well, The Event. Robert Johnson shivers my spine. I fell to pieces the first time I listened to him. I'm not kidding; the first time I listened to Robert Johnson it felt like my baptism. Same with Leadbelly. There's something in Delta blues that Chicago blues doesn't have, something a little more homespun, and that's the sort of country I love, too. Homespun potato-sack country. Music that sounds like chapped and cracked palms, songs that play like prayers, songs that play like escape routes. Isn't music really just another kind of religion? And if you haven't seen Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, you should. Now. I've seen it about four times since Lesy first showed it to my class and every single time I watch it I cannot believe how incredible it is. It's music and religion and ethnography and documentary and concert and roadtrip and very possibly the single most beautiful film I have ever seen in my entire life.
Also glad that he played "America's Favorite Past Time." Because baseball and America go together like tartan and miniskirts.
And a quick slide into frviolity. K-Jackson Browne, that sporting chap, had only ever heard "Beer Run." "If it involves 'Beer Run,' count me in" I believe were her exact words when I invited her to the show. As the show ended, she was beaming like we'd just belted "Waxie's Dargle" and while I had always loved Todd, never before did I realize quite how endearing a person genuinely having a friggin blast is. The end of the show brought forth a round of "Omigod, he's so adorable!" from all of us. He has the sweetest smile I've ever seen. I just want to be friends with him.
Brendan Holmes, you may have some competition. Just saying.
Oh, and my camera is uber-stylized. Clark, for that is my camera's name, has a touch of flamboyance and I adore him for it. He's like Kayne Gillaspie on crack.
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| From He's Just Not That Into You |
And on a different topic, the naming of my electronic devices.
Computer - James Franco, nicknamed JFranc, because he's an angsty little beast and won't stop yelling at me.
Phone - Ronald Reagan, or Ronnie, because he's weirdly attractive, red, full of useless programs, ridiculously inefficient, and cumbersome, but for some odd reason he's also very popular.
Camera - Clark, 'cause he's old-school cool.
iPod - Bruce-the-shark. I don't know why, but that's the only name he seems to like.
Peace. Love. Aspen wedges to you all. (Because goddamn, those fries are deelishush.)
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