Everybody’s Rockin’

Howdy, folks! We here at The Hurting are extraordinarily proud to once again embark on regular updates, beginning with the return of an old chestnut - Everybody’s Rockin’. (You can catch up with the first incarnation of the series by following this link.) The feature has been revived for the occasion of the second volume of The Hurting Gazette, a free weekly newsletter available here, right now. Sign up today and catch up with the archives - subsequent weeks feature writing about Phil Collins, Bananarama, and Tina Turner. This week’s newsletter, when it ships tomorrow, will have a brand new essay about Heaven 17. 

So, we’ve already got a nice stockpile. New installments of Everybody’s Rockin’ will appear here about a month after they appear in the newsletter, so if you like what you see here you can always go catch up on the newsletter archive. And remember, the newsletter also has all my links, anime recommendations, new installments of Jacqueline Thousand, Udder Madness updates, and even reader mail. It’s a blast. If that’s not enough, remember I got a Patreon too, and much like the city, it cries for vengeance. 

Introduction; The Bee-Gees - “Jive Talkin’”

I have spent my life for many years in vacation from myself, a sorely lamentable set of circumstances that restricted my every choice and deed for half a decade. What’s more, this period of struggle was itself preceded by an era of intellectual rigor and subsequent nervous breakdown that left me in little shape to read anything or listen to any music other than what I already knew well.

     

The situation was, in essence, that the portion of my brain responsible for processing new sensations was almost completely quiescent, as I simply didn’t have the emotional or intellectual bandwidth to concentrate on anything whatsoever. I didn’t even read very many comics during the period, only whatever I wrote about for the Journal. As the period continued, I gradually began to stir my faculties, enough for at least a renewed engagement with comics. It was, I reasoned, that factor in my life in which I had so far achieved the most lasting success. I have a bit of notoriety, a steady gig that actually pays a little, the goodwill of a fair percentage of the community. Those aren’t things to take for granted. Whatever I build from this point forward, if anything, has to be on that foundation.

However, I have lived many lives. 

     

In another time and another place I wrote a great deal about music. In truth, I believe I wrote too much about music, because I burnt out by writing as much as I did. I burnt a lot of bridges when I flamed out of music writing. No defense. Simply fell apart in a lot of arenas of my life around that time. Not a good time in my life, in hindsight. Music writing had become a burden, but literally everything had become a burden. That’s when I left the Journal, as well.

     

Once upon a time I greatly enjoyed it. I was knowledgeable about some things, could do my research on others. Learned an incredible amount about music by being open minded at a semi-professional level. But I did too much of it. It made me hate a lot of things about music. 

     

I do miss getting free stuff, not going to lie. But I’m sure it’s all digital these days. I’m still on a great many music promotions mailing lists that never update or purge, however, so every now and again I get a sneak of something I enjoy. A nice little present from another time in my life, perhaps. 

     

(They never purge: I’m still on promo lists, I’m pretty sure, dating back to when I did college radio. I haven’t done college radio in almost twenty years. It was a big part of my life for a surprisingly long period of time, and frankly I do miss it.) 

     

Over the subsequent years I continued to write about music, but never new music, and only on my blog. I don’t know how many of my readers cared about me talking about Daft Punk’s Homework - twice! I was so out of it I wrote the same article twice, years apart! But that I did. Wrote a whole booklet’s worth of essays about They Might Be Giant’s premillennial output - it’s available as an ebook on the ol’ Patreon - Whistling in the Dark - A (Very) Short Book About They Might Be Giants. Wrote about Fleetwood Mac and Fatboy Slim. 

     

I also started a series. It actually made it to four whole essays, which - long time readers of the blog should remember - was a rarity for me. I always trailed off from ambitious essay series I’d start. I’m sure it was frustrating for readers - how do you think it felt for me? But I made it through four essays under the rubric Everybody’s Rockin’. Wrote about Nine Inch Nails, The Beatles, Pavement, Kanye - it was another world, in so many ways, believe me! But, that notwithstanding, I really enjoyed writing those essays and had every intention of doing more, but for the fact that they were written during a period of my life in which I had no ability to follow through on anything at all. 

     

And as these years have progressed I have moved further away from a steady engagement with new music. That’s not who I ever wanted to be. But I simply didn’t have it in me to do anything else. It was a source of great unease at the time, to be frank - I remember admonishing myself, that I really needed to listen to newer music than the same old stuff. But it apparently takes effort to learn new things. The bandwidth was full.  

   

But I know that has to change, and I’ve been taking steps to reengage. I find I don’t have a lot of occasion to listen to music, but I should probably change that. I never wear my headphones in this house. I need to be aware of what the cats are doing at all times for so long as Rodger treats his poor brother like open sport, is the truth of the matter.

     

It was in this spirit that, on a particular peevish errand one bitter hot morning I found myself flipping to the Essential Bee-Gees playlist. Now, as a rule, I can’t stand the Bee-Gees. I’m sorry if that renders me a cultureless cretin in your eyes, I just don’t find their voices pleasant. Their brand of male falsetto strikes me almost like a bird call. Someone upset that poor bird.

     

And yet, the other day I happened to hear a song - a song which, I assure you, I had heard many times before in my life, even if rarely registering it over the level of supermarket loudspeaker, or the occasional afternoon’s dive on the oldie’s station - called “Jive Talkin’.” And let me tell you something about this song - hear it once, and you’re gone. You have that drumbeat in your head for the rest of the day, and that inconceivable keyboard fake outro. The most asinine little melody that you probably know by heart. Because, even if you hate the Bee-Gees, you have heard that song and that keyboard outro many, many times in your life.

     

Anyway. I was just trying to give myself something to think about other than the aforementioned peevish errand. So I pulled up the song and actually listened to it. For real listened to it. And you know, it really is a little miracle. You think it’s a slick disco number, because you’ve only heard it over shitty supermarket speakers, or not for years otherwise. But if you listen to the song, for real, it’s not overproduced at all. It’s not a slick disco song. It’s a funk song. Stripped down, too. Whatever the hell those boys are singing about, the drummer’s getting it done. I just checked and its a man named Dennis Byron. Welsh fellow. I guess they know how to funk in Wales. 

     

It’s actually kind of simple, when you break it down. Not a lot of frills. Clean, of course, but that just meant you could hear everything pretty well. Got a kind of nasty baseline, in a polite sort of way. If you’re not careful, you might mistake the opening percussive guitar for Stevie Ray Vaughan’s intro to “Modern Love” eight years later. Can’t say Bowie didn’t nick a trick himself. The sound James Murphy devoted his life to trying to replicate in a laboratory.

     

But then, there’re those weird dudes. The brothers. An uncanny bunch. Knew from a young age, apparently, that they were going to be professional musicians, and set about a lifetime of chasing trends. I say that with affection, mind. Trend chasing has a bad rap, but only because its usually a sign of desperation or inauthenticity, a break from the norm as opposed to the whole deal. It usually doesn’t work. But the thing about chasing a trend is sometimes you can actually catch it. The Bee-Gee’s made a long and fruitful career out of trying to figure out what people wanted to hear. No bones about it, heart on their sleeve they wanted to get their albums played on the radio and to sell records and all that jazz. Very authentically ingratiating about wanting to be popular. That doesn’t make them cool, just makes them people who wrote a handful of songs you know by heart even if you hate them with a burning passion. That’s not nothing. And it doesn’t mean they haven’t also been residents of the uncanny valley since before anyone knew what the uncanny valley was. 

     

When was the last time you listened to “New York Mining Disaster 1941”? That’s a weird song! Dark and sparse, for its time. You can hear Mark E. Smith clearing his throat in the parking lot. From an album described as the Bee-Gee’s Sgt Pepper. The Bee-Gee’s were around long enough to have done a Sgt. Pepper. Then they spent some time in the wilderness after their 60s success, and got hungry for a hit. They went from that depressing jangle-folk with sort of a nervy undercurrent to a pretty funky dance band in the space of about eight years. To do that, and not fall on your face takes agility and ability both, I have to acknowledge even if I am lukewarm on many of the results. There’s something almost refreshing about that attitude towards music: oh, yes, we just want to make something people are going to like. Lots of people, not just whoever liked our last thing. What are people listening to now? 

     

To be fair, by 1975 there weren’t many people interested in what the Bee-Gees were doing. They weren’t clicking with anyone, until they went to America and discovered The Meters. But they did, and it worked. Wouldn’t probably have worked for anyone else, but somehow it worked for them. 

     

I found myself returning to another song as well, a weird choice but a melody that got lodged in my brain. This despite it being not very good: “You Win Again.” You probably don’t remember it. Very representative early 90s adult contemporary, in most respects. Gloopy synthesizers up the wazoo.

     

There’s never been a time for adult contemporary like the 1990s. All the old rock stars from previous decades graduated to generic soft rock pop records that sold like crazy. There were some younger acts in there, too, but it was still squarely aimed for the middle-age demographic. Bowie, for all his many achievements, never had a big adult contemporary hit. Never even strayed a toe in that direction, even though he almost certainly could have made a lot of bank on an album that sounded like everything else on the radio. Occasionally a real gem snuck through, of course, even given those strictures. “Constant Craving” got played on a lot of adult contemporary stations. In terms of production and ubiquity, if not subject matter, it was an exemplar of the form.

     

I couldn’t tell you what “You Win Again” is about - the boys sound like they’re having a very one-sided conversation. And yet somehow that melody just lopes through your head like a baby elephant. It’s the damnedest thing. Doesn’t look like it did that well in America, but they did still chart a couple more hits in the coming years. On records that sound very contemporary to their times, for better or for worse. Oh look, the music boys are back.