Once, in my early college days, I attempted to try to rid myself of Southern Accent because I hated to be perceived as dimwitted, hated to be looked upon (even moreso than I already felt I was) as an outcast, a social pariah. The summer before my senior year of high school, several students from my high school and I took a ten-day trek through Europe. Whilst abroad, my learned friends and I met other American high-school students, all of part of a larger EF tour group. Upon first meeting them, one particular (and very attractive) girl asked us what we listened to, and I answered: Motley Crue, Guns N' Roses, Bon Jovi, Poison, and Hank Williams, Jr. Oh my goodness, the looks I received from these other students (and from my friends, too). We listend to that? "Well, they are from Mississippi," I heard someone say.
What this comment implied was that these metal bands and country acts were not chic, not hip, not cool...that they were what the hicks listened to, the social retarded, the misfits, the conformists...and then one of my friends stated that yeah, but not all of us listen to that stuff, some of us even listen to U2, R.E.M., and the Cure. The other students' faces lit up in recognition and something, and my friends faces lit up in acceptance. They were now cool; not all Mississippians were backwards, not all were trapped in the d*u*m*b*, and this proved it. Forget all that metal mess and country slovenry, that stuff's not progressive enough, not intelligent enough, not cerebral enough, not about something (meaning something important to those people), not about something important, not counter-culture enough, not alternative enough, 'cause mainstream rock sucks, and conformity sucks, and your musical taste sucks, 'cause it's not just like mine, and my friends, and my friends' friends....
Right then and there, I decided that I was no longer a metal head. Sure I liked R.E.M. and U2 and the Cure and the Violent Femmes and the Pixies as well as these people did, but when it was Friday night and Saturday night, I didn't blast them from the radio. Now, I was going to have to learn to do so, which, of course, would mean hanging out with a different weekend crowd, 'cause my weekend buddies did listen to metal (and rap), and they were proud of it (as I previously was...except where my parents were concerned), and...I didn't want to hang out with another weekend crowd, 'cause my weekend buddies had fun, and I had fun with them, with no pretensions at all. What to do? Wait till college.
Till then, I'd continue my current lifestyle, and I wouldn't have to distance myself from my friends just yet. Instead, in secret, I'd bone up on my alternative music, learn to be hip, but I'd keep the hip hidden until college, where I could fit in with a newer, smarter, hipper crowd. That was the ticket: the ticket out, the ticket to big money, the ticket to success, and the ticket to acceptance. And wasn't acceptance what I was after all these years, since elementary school? Yes it was. And here was my second chance upcoming. I'd blown my first one with these tour group peers, but I knew another one was coming soon, with graduation just around the corner.
Well, graduation arrives, and my tour-group friends go to prominent (in-state) universities, and I could have gone, too, for I had scholarships as well, but...see, I had a full scholarship to the nearby community college, and my sister was only two years younger than I (and still is), and she'd be needing to go to college, too, and my parents weren't rich (at the time, my father an accountant and my mother an elementary school assistant teacher), and...well, you know. You do what you have to do, right? I mean, what would Peter Parker have done? Okay, Peter Parker would have come in first in his class, not third, and he ended up getting a full-scholarship to a major university, not a community college, but still...if he had not been as smart as he was...okay, then, he never would have become Spider-Man, because he wouldn't have been able to invent those web-shooters and develop that web-fluid...but, even if he had never become Spider-Man, then what would he have done in my situation? Okay, he wouldn't, 'cause romance comics were a dying breed in '62, and Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and Martin Goodman would never have wasted space in a soon-to-be-cancelled sci-fi/monster comic to tell the tales of a high-school loser who never made it with a lady till the boys up and go to the university while he's stuck in some two-bit, hick, junior college, with more of the people from whom he was trying to distance himself. But what if?
I tell you what if: Peter Parker would have bitten the proverbial bullet and gone to that two-bit junior college and saved his parents--who loved him so--the worry of where they were going to come up with the funds. He wouldn't even complain about it (other than in thought balloons). So, I took the Peter Parker route. I went to the nearby community college, and I never told my parents how much I truly hated the idea.* And you know what? For the most part, I loved that two-bit junior college.
I even joined the marching and concert band there, as well as the college's official pop/rock band. I wasn't a talented enough drummer to play the trap-set for 'em, though, so instead, I joined as a technician (which was a euphemism for a roadie), and I was deigned to be in charge of setting and striking the keyboard and its amp, stand, etc....After several shows, I noticed that the band's keyboard player didn't play too many solos, so I asked the director why she didn't, because she was an incredibly skilled player (even had a partial scholarship to Juliard, but had to turn it down due to lack of funds to pay for the entire tuition there). The director told me that primarily, the piano was a percussive instrument, and that's how he primarily used it. I then remembered back to elementary school music class, to the charts on the wall, and I remember seeing the picture of the piano underneath the percussion heading. Funny, I thought then, that I'd forgotten something so basic. The piano as percussion: okay, then, I see it. I think of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis and Elton John (in his earlier, more straight-ahead rockin' tunes), and I hear it: the piano cuts a groove. And no modern white rock and roll band can cut a straight groove the way Spoon can.
Spoon has been around for a little over ten years, and their records have progressively improved, but their strong sense of the importance of groove was always present (in large part due to their modern-day Charlie Watts drummer, Jim Eno); in their own way, they're a blues-pop band, with the blues coming from their repetitive rhythms, struck first, unrelenting and insistent. If any band can compare closely to the Rolling Stones, it's Spoon. The Black Keyes hue closer to Zeppelin than the Stones do, and the White Stripes--well, they're their own beast, but Spoon--just like the Stones did--takes blues and R&B rhythms and craft simple, catchy melodies around them, though their melodies never overtake their base, their center. For variation on their sound, Spoon often pulls in sounds from disco (where the Stones pulled in sounds from country music), and--in "The Underdog"--supper-club jazz and mariachi.
Of course, Spoon begins the song with a rhythm guitar, band co-leader Britt Daniel strumming away sixes in four-four time, all designed to start the head bouncing to the beat, and then the bass comes in (more rhythm), and then throughout the rest of the song, Spoon throws in some mariachi/supper-club horns, finger snaps, stick beats (or are those--I mean, really--spoons?), and hand claps on the off beat. It all sounds like early, "Only the Good Die Young"-era Billy Joel, and that's a great thing. The song's open and loose and fresh, and it's lyrics could be about the Bush administration, could be (and probably is) about the record industry, could be about corporate big-wigs of any nomenclature or denomination, about sticking it to the man, about sticking to one's guns, about the courage of one's convictions, about appreciating artistry and honest work, about a lack of pretentiousness, about not following trends, about being true to one's self, about never forgetting the hard-working folks who enable us to do what we're now able to do, about never hiding one's musical taste or regional accent just to appease those who probably wouldn't like you no matter how you sounded or what you listened to, as opposed to those who'd been accepting you just the way you were for as long as you can remember, and about--and I had to say it--great responsiblity.
NOTES*
Of course, I probably did tell them, and I probably whined, but ever since my horrendous car-crash of 1990--where I'd broken my neck in three places and caused severe bleeding between the hemispheres of my brain--my memory doesn't serve me as well as it should, so I'm probably imagining myself to be have had more integrity then than I truly possessed. And, you know, I find that happens often, that I see myself as more heroic than I truly am or truly ever was. That's what years of reading superhero comics will do for you.
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