In an interview broadcast today, singer John Mellencamp described to NPR’s Terry Gross the inspiration for the song “Longest Days” on his 2008 CD, Life Death Love and Freedom.
He said his grandmother called him Buddy. She lived to 100. Late in life she often asked him to lay in bed with her as she rested. Once, side by side, she asked him to pray with her.
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News comes that my grown son, Zachary, is learning the banjo. I knew that like me he loves the instrument’s sound — singular and echoing and mournful. Not discordant but of the earth in the way the guitar and other stringed instruments are not. I didn’t know he harbored ambition to make music.
The news made me wonder whether musical tastes are genetically linked. For two people born thirty-five years apart, we share remarkably similar likes when it comes to bands. In our personal relationship we’ve had plenty of differences over the years, but we delight in exposing each other to our individual discoveries of singers.
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Exercising while listening to music and watching tragic news on CNN is a collision of dissonance.
Picture the scene: two dozen bodies bouncing along on cardio equipment in front of six health club TVs. I’m on the elliptical machine. Music blaring from my ear buds drowns out all other sound, even my panting breaths. My eyes are fixed on the seige at Mumbai, playing out in video images and closed-caption text. But my thoughts careen from one unrelated subject to the next.
The Taj Mahal hotel shudders with explosions and belches black smoke set to an inadvertent soundtrack, Death Cab for Cutie’s “Your Heart Is an Empty Room.” The song doesn’t fit what’s on the screen, though one line jolts me: Burn it down, till the embers smoke on the ground.
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My forty-year high school reunion in September didn’t make me feel old. In fact, I felt young again surrounded by my long-lost friends.
It’s always that way when I’m with my two brothers. In a way, we never age no matter how many lies the mirror tells and how far our attitudes diverge. How could it be any other way? We landed in life so close together, a span of twenty-six months to the day, and rooted next to each other in the same ground.
The passage of forty years came to mind tonight when I read of another four-decade anniversary tomorrow: the release of the Beatles’ White Album. (Listen to a fascinating NPR retrospective here.) Countless times my brothers and I listened to every song, cranked up as loud as our parents would tolerate. Whenever I hear “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” I’m transported to David’s room. He had the killer sound system and the most eclectic musical tastes.
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I stand in the rain. The Avett Brothers are about to take the stage in Portland at the Oregon Zoo amphitheater. So miserable is the weather this night that wife and little son fled for home after the opening act.
Everyone is soaked and cold. While I wait, tunes from “Emotionalism” play in my head. Soon we’re jumping, crowded at the edge of the stage, invigorated by the Avetts’ energy that will keep me awake long after I’m home.
What’s the appeal? Not just their harmonizing twang tinged with rock and frenetic punk outbursts. Or their whiskey North Carolina drawls and plaintive lyrics. These boys are just flat out wired and unafraid to bare what’s roiling inside them.
I’m afraid to look at the rest of their tour schedule. I might bust out the Visa card and follow them, old-guy groupie who knows the lyrics and gets funny looks from the young hipsters when he sings along. Can’t help myself.
I’m at the gym today, listening to the Avett Brothers‘ CD Emotionalism as I pant and sweat. CNN is on the TV several feet away. I vow not to read the closed-caption transcription of John McCain’s speech and look away. But my eyes betray me.
McCain excoriates Barack Obama for not supporting the surge and brands him as an opponent of “victory.”
First thought: Karl Rove is playing a larger advisory role in the McCain campaign than reported.
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Being there is everything. Not just attending small venue concerts to hear musicians I’m enthralled with but making sure I’m pressed next to the stage.
I want to see what’s written on their faces, to witness the up-close interplay with their band mates, to judge how they play off the audience. I want to imagine how they feel as they peer into the bright lights and hear the adoring cheers. How much do they reveal of themselves, and how much is a mask of repetitive showmanship played out over and over from one city to the next? How much do they genuinely give besides music?
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