Premature Obituaries: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

I think it was right around the time that Scott Weiland, the self-thrashing, hollow-veined singer of rock legends Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver, did a herky-jerky dance of this mortal coil. At the time of his death, Weiland's musical life was considered to be, or so it seemed according to the popular wisdom of the time, a bad joke. Yet within hours of his body hitting the floor, music-scribblers rushed to pen tributes to, if not his genius, then at least how much his music had meant to them. Usually their love was written in the past tense, a hedging of elegiac bets if you will. And as I don't believe in cognizant afterlives, angelic, supernatural, or otherwise, it seemed a goddamn shame to me that old Swingin' Scotty Weiland died without ever getting to read such glowing tributes to his music. Thinking about all the other music artists who will one day die without knowing the depths of audience/critical love that exists for them, I had the idea for a running column: the Premature Obituary. I pitched it to Magnet, since they tend to traffic in music artists on the verge of death (note to aspiring music-content providers--don't put that in your pitch), but they didn't respond. I even included an example, because I recognized that the concept might sound a little strange on the surface. Ladies and Gentleman, I present a Premature Obituary for David Gahan written a few years ago. It wasn't good enough for Magnet, but maybe it will be good enough for you.

Premature Obituary: RIP David Gahan (1962-2016)

I guess we’ll all remember where we were when we heard the shocking news about David Gahan, the legendary Depeche Mode singer who died yesterday at the age of 54. If his band was the Rolling Stones of synthpop, well he commanded a stage better than Jagger ever did, and he gave Richards a run for his money in the chemical department as well.

A lot of people today are going to talk about Gahan’s legacy in terms of top ten hits. They’ll tell you about his decades of commercial success, the role his band played in the evolution of techno, of IDM, of EDM. And everything those people say will be important, but today I can’t stop thinking of the role Depeche Mode played in my life, how their music pulled me out of one life and into another so dramatically that I still to this day believe that inter-dimensional travel is possible.

I was 15 years old in the winter of 1988 and all I wanted to do was play one day for the Boston Celtics, or barring that, become a sports columnist for The Boston Globe. I’d been living in Southern California for two years and still didn’t fit in. Everyone around me seemed tanned and muscular and understood everything going on around them. I had none of those things. At 6’ 3” and 145lbs, my existence on the JV basketball team—at the end of the bench, to be used only in case of emergency—had more to do with my willingness to show up than any incredible physical gifts. And yet there I was, practicing six days a week and wearing a uniform that hung on me like a powder-blue shower curtain, hoping that manhood would kick in any day now and give me muscles and all the social benefits that came with being a star athlete at Granite Hills High School.

Tom and Tim Underwood were also on the team—twin brothers, I think fraternal twins, and their dad was the asst. coach. A lot kinder and quieter than our head coach, the improbably named Joe Roos, a screamer from Texas whose angry voice I can still hear booming ‘MOVE THE BALL BLUE!’ Coach Roos was a great coach in many ways, and his time at GHHS coincided with the basketball team’s greatest success (our JV team went 15-1 that year). He then got promoted to varsity coach, only to be fired my senior year after he tried to forfeit the team’s playoff game because he didn’t think they deserved to be there.

I was long gone by the time all that went down though.

I wasn’t friends with Tim or Tom—I wasn’t really friends with anyone on that team. I spent my sophomore year skinny and awkward and lost in a weird fog of confusion. So I remember thinking it was weird one night after practice when Tom asked if I wanted a ride home. When I told him I had my bike with me, he said that was cool, we could just throw it in the back of his truck. None of my friends had cars, let alone a truck, and Tom’s truck was even nicer than my dad’s car.
I sat in the back of the extended cab while Tim rode shotgun. I can clearly and vividly, almost in slow-motion, see Tim turning on the radio, and the song that came out of the speakers changed my life forever.

I didn’t recognize the song. I mostly listened to Top 40 and mainstream rock—Springsteen, Def Leppard, Van Halen, etc,—around that time. Tom got excited when he realized what song it was, or maybe it was Tim, or maybe it was both of them. I listened closer, to try and hear it the way they were hearing it

Granite Hills Drive is a curving road that twists left and right and then left again, and it can be disorienting if you’ve been playing basketball for two hours and you’re badly in need of fluids/food/sleep. No one said anything as we drove. It was the most exciting music I’d heard in my life—dramatic & forceful, but without any of the histrionics or over-emoting I was used to hearing. And the song wasn’t about girls, or sex, neither of which I had much experience with at that point. The song was about riding in a car and watching the world go past you. 

Which is something I knew all too well. And yet the singer of ‘Route 66’ made it sound like the coolest thing in the world. My embarrassing life pulled through the looking class and turned into something cool. Travel my way, take the highway that’s the best.

For better or worse, Depeche Mode still have the reputation of being effete synthpoppers, but the guitars on ‘Route 66’ were louder and more powerful than anything I’d heard before. It wasn’t rock as I knew it. There was no guitar solo, with notes all frantic & squealing & bent. The singer didn’t scream like the heavy metal guys, or shout in a faux-hick voice like Springsteen. This guy sounded calm and confident, like he knew things nobody else knew, and he had all the time in the world to tell his story.

We pulled into my apartment complex and I thanked Tom for the ride. I made sure to get two pieces of information: Depeche Mode (the name of the band) and 91X (the name of the radio station). And that was all I needed.

‘Route 66’ turned out to be the b-side on the ‘Behind the Wheel’ single—it took me forever to find it. And 91X turned out to be a station broadcasting out of TIjuana that played what was then called ‘alternative’ music (their slogan was ‘The Cutting Edge of Rock’), the kind of station that was as likely to play a band’s b-side as play their ubiquitous hit. And so I got to discover hidden gems like The Cure’s ‘2 Late,’ Morrissey’s ‘Hairdresser On Fire,’ New Order’s ‘1963,’ on the radio.

And it’s also where I discovered Depeche Mode’s ‘Never Let Me Down Again’ Have you ever seen the version from the movie 101?

It’s a masterclass in stadium singing. There’s none of Jagger’s hyperactive neediness, none of Bono’s macho pomp, Chris Martin’s faux-humility. He’s completely immersed in the song. It’s an emotional performance, and incredibly brave. His bandmates, barely lit, are all standing behind their instruments while Gahan’s out there all by himself. On one side of the stadium you have three musicians with their heads down, and on the other side you have 60,000 screaming people, and in the middle of it all stands David Gahan, an emotional conduit, overcome by the beauty of it all.

At the three minute mark, he gets so caught up in the song that he looks like he’s about to burst into tears, so when he stands up and throws his arms open towards the crowd, it doesn’t feel like a messiah-move, it feels like a desperate need to communicate, like he’s saying are you feeling this too? 

At the end of that basketball season Coach Roos pulled me aside and told me if I put on 20lbs of muscle that I’d start varsity next season—I was that good of a basketball player. Inspired, I convinced my dad to get me a gym membership and an endless supply of protein shakes, but my metabolism raged on regardless and I actually ended up losing two pounds that summer. You could actually see my ribs poking out right above my abdominal muscles. Forget about having a six-pack, I had a suitcase. Coach took one look at me when school started and decided I was lazy and unmotivated. He spent the next season screaming at me and challenging my manhood, which considering my dad—also a screamer—had just kicked me out of our apartment a couple of months earlier, was an exceptionally bad motivational strategy. And that was the end of my basketball career.

But by that point, a new world was opening up to me courtesy of the radio, and I was learning there were ways of being a man that were more interesting, and more rewarding, than simply being tough. And that maybe the star athletes at my school didn’t act confident because they had all the answers, but because they hadn’t gotten around to asking any questions. And it turned out there was a world out there a lot bigger than my high school, a world where being awkward, or lost in one’s thoughts, or confused about sex & masculinity and all the baggage that came with it, were things to be valued, weaknesses that could be turned into strengths because they were, in their own way, a form of truth, a truth that most people didn’t have access to.

Depeche Mode was never my favorite band, but looking back on it today, in the wake of their lead singer’s death, I realize that no band had a bigger impact on my life. I imagine how dull & desperate & small my life might have been if I hadn’t heard David Gahan’s voice that night. And I just wish I could have told him thank you while he was still here..

It’s strange. When a singer dies, it feels like all of their songs become ghosts, haunting us with the singer’s absence. I've thought more about David Gahan today than I have in the past 15 years. His every word recontextualized by the void and I still can’t believe he’s really gone. 

What a beautiful goddamn voice.

Teddy Adorno and the Influence of Anxiety

Don't get me wrong. I've got nothing against old Teddy Adorno. Band I used to play in even named an album of ours after one of his books--we were furiously scanning our bookshelves after a band member vetoed 'Sleazo Trance Imperative' because she though it made us sound sleazy. Wasn't my title idea, so I don't want to hear about any of your objections. But we were familiar with T.A. Frankfurter's cultural analysis--I don't come to bury Teddy, I come to dialect at him. For while he was never necessarily totally wrong about any of his music critic theories (certainly righter than, say, one of the biggest fans of this blog's chutzpah), that's only because they were so fucking cynical and closed-ended that they couldn't be disproven. Like, the whole big appeal of morbid cynicism is that nobody can ever prove you wrong--and any disagreement can be dismissed as mere sentimentality, or naivete, i.e. weakness. Which is why so many insecure wounded boy types flock to Teddy's writings like moths to a belsen burner. But the point, that is to say, the POINT getting to--wait, one more point before I get to THE POINT: in these political days you can't be cynical enough, am I right? I mean, even I, someone who has been accused of being a joyless worrywart scab-picker (as a writer--in person I am nothing but buttercups and silk pajamas), even I was certain Ms. Clinton would be elected president, that J. Corbyn would at least make it close, that D. S(trump)et would be seen as the conjob shitbox that he oh so obviously is. So let us all acknowledge that there can be value in cynicism, and a danger in sentimentality.

Having sort of said all that, my big objection to Teddy A's protests against the culture industry is that he saw the influence running more or less one way--the culture shaped the society. He had all kinds of valid biographical reasons to do this. After you've seen a propaganda machine destroy your way of life, kill camploads of your friends, and instigate global warfare, any pop song that isn't explicitly against fascism is probably going to trigger all kinds of PTSD. But I was thinking just now in the bathtub that one of the redeeming things about the current pop/rock/indie/genre-dissolution music landscape we now inhabit is that, while most of it is faux-nihilistic blankness, that blankness does, as the old bourgeois-shockers used to say, hold up a mirror to society man.

So our current music landscape that is mostly populated by careerist neoliberal blandouts, or homeschooled rich kids willing to work themsevles into a premature grave, or outliers willing to represent the false ideal that 'anyone can make it' (if they work hard enough) isn't going to create those conditions. It's going to reflect what's already there.

Let's consider the fleeting face of this particular pop moment (and child laborer) Billie Eilish. Take away the contemporary flourishes, and all you've got is a 21st century version of the Carpenters (right down to the inferior-talented sibling). The album itself is pretty much a snoozefest of barely-veiled showbiz glop, except for the grammy-winning hit, which I'm willing to admit sounds catchy & hooky. There hasn't been an underage hitmaker so desperately begging to offend someone since Ms. Spears, though Britney's "hit me" was far more ambiguous than the bloody nose and bruised knees, to say nothing of the BSDM-lite of Bad Guy's protagonist.

Of course because this is 2020 now, and the first goal of every artist, or every influencer, of every CEO of their very own Personal Brand Inc. is to sell one's self, to appeal to the broadest possible audience, even the line about seducing the father of the song's antagonist feels obvious and cheap. Even the edgiest, most uncomfortable moment of the Eilish clan's big hit owes more to a ubiquitous porn trope than any real transgression. I'll spare you the hyperlinks by giving you a screenshot.

We live in a society that fetishizes female youth, that condones violence, especially sexual violence, against women. A 2018 Esquire article identified Incest Porn as the fastest growing trend in porn (the fastest receding trend? friendly handshakes). Girls being sexually abused by their stepfathers isn't just a porn category, it's a real-life hellish nightmare landscape. We live in an age where we have easy access to everything except for financial security, safety, and compassion.

None of which is the concern of Billie Eilish, or her family. The uncomfortable parts of her song are (I'm assuming--if I'm assuming wrong, then she's got bigger problems here) meant to be 'provocative,' or 'controversial,' or 'edgy.' What they actually are--and in this sense, her art mirrors all mass-marketed rebellion these days--are 'predictable,' 'way too common,' and 'exploitative.' So while I don't think, as Teddy A. obsessively fretted, that her cultural artifact is going to drive society into a ditch, it's worth remembering that mirrors, even the ones that reflect the world we live in, tend to be two-dimensional, flat and only illuminated by the narcissism of the person gazing into it.

I should say that another thing that Adorno got right is that cultures and societies are inherently unstable, and that each can amplify the worst aspects of the other in a cycle that leads to dehumanization and genocide. Eilish Inc.'s lack of ethical POV re: anything is disturbing, not because it doesn't exist, but because it's not-existing-ness feels like an essential part of its marketing, like if having an ethical POV seemed more cash-effective, then that would have been in the song. Which is just the ultimate empty nihilistic gesture when you think about it, like a corporation destroying the planet for profit then donating $15million to climate research or something.

 And since I'm just some un-esteemed cultural critic who worries too much, I'll just go ahead and assume that Billie Eilish's future will be an exception to what usually happens, and that her life will unfold along the smooth, emotionally healthy path that most child stars seem to travel. And that working a 16-year-old harder than most adults will ever work in their lives, while under the scrutiny of millions, will have zero negative ramifications for anyone, and one of us will ever have to regret anything when the day comes that we're winning the awards and have at last achieved our deeply-held ambitions.

Houdini Mansions

I'm a hip guy. Can you smell the hipness? I say things, in my best hick voice, like, "Awww yeah, I like that experimental music. You know...Merzbow...Sonic Youth." But truth be told, I've always had a soft spot for melody. Blame my mom for playing all that Neil Diamond/Carpenters/ABBA 70's schlock. Blame my dad for having a soft spot for Paul Simon. Blame the radio, my truest and deepest friend from ages 10-17. Anyway, there's great experimental stuff all over the cyber-diaspora of the Houdini Mansions label. They're based out of Easley, South Carolina (Easley is easily the closest decent-sized town to Greenville, which is home to the closest minor league baseball affiliate of my beloved Boston Red Sox, G'ville being a 1 1/2 hour drive from my driveway).

House of Cake is as much a collage as a compilation. It bleeps and bloops and drones in all the right places, and in all the wrong places which also happen to be right--don't you know how the universe is chaos and yummy in your (quan)tummy?

But the emotional high point for me is the sweet simple three-note descending bass-tone on track four, which I'm 99.4% sure is titled "Sugar Boys." The vocal melody goes up as the bass melody goes down, and the result is one of those weightless free-floating moments that isn't a million miles away from Dancing Queen. Because the universe also knows how to repeat, and coalesce, and spin slowly enough for you to observe its beauty with wonder and awe.

Artist Of The Decade

Nobody asked me, and I didn't ask anybody, but here's my favorite song from this just-about-over decade. Or maybe my favorite video. Or maybe the video that best embodies the decade, our simultaneous numbness and desperation, horror and entertainment, laughter and death. I'd say Danny Brown is the Artist Of The Decade if I had any confidence in those kinds of proclamations (and Kanye is probably more emblematic, straight-down to his mental illness and lack of critical thinking).

I don't have the authority to give out awards, nor do I have the ability to believe in them. But Danny Brown, in this and other songs throughout the decade (he just put out an album in October! it's got a metacritic score of 83!), embodied the thrill of chasing one's contradictions all over the room. The attempt to confront your traumas and to avoid confronting your traumas, and how it's more fun to believe in nothing, except believing in nothing is a big part of why you can't stop bleeding. The fact that his music makes you want to move your body is just an added bonus. The numbed-out cool in other people feels like a pose; Danny Brown's freaked-out screaming is real*, and sounds like a natural response from anyone who's paying attention to anything.

* - Real as in it-feels-real-to-me, as in it connects on a visceral level that causes me to feel actual feelings that are felt in the places still able to feel. And I can't believe that the debate around "authenticity" (more of a top-down hectoring than a debate, a way to shut up any criticisms of the spoiled-brat private-schooled child-star artistes that are positioned as vital, necessary music makers) has devolved to the point where "realness" that invites scorn. If it doesn't matter whether an artist has anything to say, or makes music that moves you emotionally, then an artist who comes along with those qualities has no reason to be valued. What is valued?, you might ask. I hoped you would. Let's just assume that you did. An artist with something to sell. Which isn't always bad, but just, uh, note who gets excluded. And remember that when sellers (or art, or anything) try to imagine what the public wants to buy, they always envision more-of-the-same, easy-to-digest, and unlikely-to-offend. That goes for prose vendors as well.

An Update For The Dozens

...Of people who follow this blog. Turned in the manuscript a month ago, and it looks like a book will appear in 2020 on an academic press with my name on it. A well-researched, co-written bio of a well-known band. The writing filled every non-working, non-parental moment since July, and after my Domestic Partner lost her job in August, meant that I had to both up my hours at work and write a (rough draft) chapter a week. Then edit, etc.

Thankfully, my DP started a new job in November that will pay enough for us to get out from under the debt we accumulated Aug-Oct. We are lucky beyond belief.

Anyway, I may go back to doing this blog again as a place to anonymously experiment with some stuff, though less anonymously, it turns out, than I had initially hoped.

Never tell anyone a secret if you want it to remain a secret. Lalalala.

A poem for today

The Future

The future is a joke

My idea of a joke

That is to say, dark and filthy

Riddled with corruption

And corrupted by riddles

The future is murder

Same as the past

Only now more indirect

Less culpable

Easier than ever to follow

Someone else’s order

The future is hope

Felt for fleeting moments

Surely the potential exists

Even by the fluke of random occurrence

For something humane

A collective ascent

But no

But know

The future is distraction

Words and identity

Disappearing into a void

Plummeting through a bottomless well

A shared dream

We experience separately

Answering Guardian Headlines #1

Here's a feature that will be (possibly) mutually fulfilling, and easily attainable in spite of the looming contractual writing deadline which, coupled with my actual income-producing gig, has consumed nearly every free minute for the last several months.

We will answer (without reading, b/c that's the way we do things in the 21st century) headlines in that day's Guardian that are, for traffic-driving reasons, framed as questions, some more rhetorical than others. We'll also include our favorite hot-take Op-Ed headline at the end as a bonus.

(worth mentioning that it's cool The Guardian isn't hidden behind a paywall. They do some great journalism, and deserve our gratitude and, depending on the balance in your bank account, our financial support).

US healthcare is booming. So why do one in five workers live in poverty?

Because US healthcare is, like most US things, driven by profits. And underpaying your workers is a (simple, stupid) way to make more money.

'Like a sunburn on your lungs': how does the climate crisis impact health?

It makes it worse.

Toy stories: can a woke makeover win Barbie and Monopoly new fans?

Anyone who seriously gives a fuck one way or another should be ashamed of themselves. Note: this isn't an article, it's a free commercial for a multinational conglomerate.

Hollow boom: why black Americans feel left out of US’s robust economy

Not technically a question, but we'll answer it anyway. Because the US is a white supremacist police state is built on the exploitation of all manual labor.

Saved by the Bell: Will the revival be 2020's Most Depressing Show?

No. That will be the election night broadcast. Also pretty sure this is also an ad.



And here's the hot-take Op-Ed of the day that makes us fear for the future of humanity:

Why Ivanka Trump's new haircut should make us very afraid

(Honorable mention goes to To decarbonize we must decomputerize: why we need a Luddite revolution)