Song About Singing - A Pattern Here

There’s a pattern here (which I’ll get to).

Tomorrow, on 9/11, I release “Song About Singing,” the opening single off the upcoming double album, The Beast Is Back. It’s a hobo-rock anthem (a genre coined by producer Tyler Fortier – rowdy and grandiose, but with all the grimy acousticky sounds of banjo, dobro, upright bass and trashy drums.)

What’s it about?

It’s a closing salvo at the spiritual fatigue and exhaustion from ever-digging deep and ever-fighting the good fight. You might say it’s a paradoxical surrender by simply raising the flag and declaring victory for no apparent reason:

I’m gonna sing a song about singing / Gonna dance to a song about dancing / And I’m gonna make love to a song about making love / And it’s alright!

No, what’s the song really about?

When I was young, I was quite the music snob, with an appetite for ArtRock, Prog, Jazz Fusion and quasi-poetic lyrics that seemed profound to an impressionable kid. As a matter of principle, I detested pop songs about singing, rock songs about rocking out, and dance tunes about getting on the dance floor and shaking your booty. The glorious gorgeousness of music, I thought, should not be relegated to the mating ritual. (I was a pretentious tool.)

But that was before I became a musician. Once I started performing, writing and recording, my eyes opened. I fell in love with the history of popular music, and asked myself, “Why are these figures so huge in our scope – in deep and meaningful ways – when ninety percent of what they do is just having fun? Singing. Dancing. And making love.” I mean, there’s James Brown, and he’s just dancin’ again, and his lyrics are like, “Check me out! I got moves!” And he is an icon of passion, felt in a much bigger way, far beyond his moments of blowing off steam. And take Marvin Gaye begging to know “What’s going on?” then pivoting to “Let’s get it on.” Even Bob Marley, the epitome of spirituality & social justice in musical art, is beloved for “Jamming” and “Stir it Up.” Love songs & dance songs.

All of this is taken for granted by most folks. But for me, coming out of my suburban bubble, it was an epiphany. Art is life. And the message of the artist is meaningless if the artist is not a full participant in the roiling of humanity. I stopped expecting musicians to function as preachers & philosophers, which is unsatisfying as a way of experiencing music. (As a side note, I also learned about the power and meaning of artists of color visibly celebrating the fullness of their humanity in plain view. People wiser than I have written and spoken eloquently and pointedly on this.)

Anyway, I have this Zen exercise: If I hear myself make a blanket dismissive statement about any field of endeavor, personality type or genre of art, I pause, check myself, and resign to the task of learning about it, giving it the respect it deserves, and then doing it. If I say I don’t like Rockabilly, bam! I gotta write a Rockabilly song. If I hate songs about singing… Well, it took me long enough, but I finally wrote one…  And I’m not even sure it really is a song about singing. And of the subsequent 17 Beast songs, not one of them is about singing or dancing. (Though there is one about drinking, but it’s not exactly celebratory.)

So, what’s the pattern I mentioned? Begging pardon for further self-absorption, it gave me a chuckle when I spotted it.

The last double album I put out, Pollyanna Love Cassandra, opens with the same kind of song: “Dyson Jam.” The subtitle is “Rock & Roll is Supposed to Be Fun.”  And none of the subsequent 31 songs is about fun. It’s like I have to get some angsty self-consciousness out of my system before getting on with the “epic” part of any big project. Like coughing up a fur ball, or purging before an impossibly large meal.

And come to think of it, my other regular feature length albums start like that too. My debut solo album, Sudden & Merciless Joy, opens with a dark anthem called “Hunger Artist,” an allegory based on Franz Kafka’s story of a circus sideshow attraction who starves himself to death because he’s not popular anymore. It’s a navel-gazing moment of negation before proceeding into all of the earnestness – song after earnest song –  that follows.

And my last album, Villain, opens with “Lion,” demonstrating the same self-conscious settling-in-process. Before getting on with the rest of the album , the Lion extorts his critics to back-the-heck-off, ‘cause he already knows that the work isn’t as important as he looks like he thinks it is:

“Everyone’s a critic, but I’m the one who did it. / Why don’t they all just get out of the way? / …So my Golden Fleece wasn’t such a masterpiece. / Why did they all have to be so mean?

Well, enough of that already… back to work.