Chicken Out of Hell
An Andrew
Hamlin Joint
Who Will
Save Your Soul Dept.: Went to an
interesting "Heaven and Hell" theme
party last weekend; an upstairs apartment was
"Heaven" adorned with champagne,
donuts, a few angels, and "God" looking
more like a Greek who'd won the marathon then
showered and donned clean togs to pose for the
victory statue. God's good buddy/lover(?) curated
"Hell" two floors down with a cute dark
angel in lace-and-wire wings, a mean sangria
clogged with fruit, and the Devil himself looking
even fitter than God. Heaven, small surprise, had
on a record of 80's hits interpreted lounge
style. Hell's stereo finished up the Morrissey
record and I wormed my way next to the computer
to select The Complete Picture, a Debbie
Harry/Blondie retrospective.
I was just the
right age to absorb postmodern ironic detachment
in my teens--but I was born a little too young to
have it in my genes. For better or whichever, I
took music and extracted what I felt; I read
surface sincerity as sincerity, not any
agreed-upon conceptual Tholian Web lived out by
the bands, diagnosed by critics, chased after by
the fans or at least the ones just old enough to
buy pina coladas and stay out late. With a
reality inoculation--had I gone to a Blondie
show, say, seen them sweat and strain and snap a
high heel--my imagination would have swelled with
antibodies leaving me reasonably secure smirking
behind some wraparound shades and a shirt with
either skinny stripes or thick zippers. (I wore a
Sonny Crockett outfit to school once but the
pants were six inches too short and I'd
accessorized with not only the wraparounds but
also a six-foot long black-and-white scarf only
Tom Baker could love, so the glasses mostly hid
how hard I was trying not to wince.)
So for example,
when Kim Wilde sings "Kids in America,"
I do not hear studied blase in a synth base; I
hear her Cassandriad on the lawn-sprinkling of
America--"Outside a new day is dawning/
Outside suburbia's sprawling everywhere"--in
the calm urgency of a tornado warning in
Missouri. So too Debbie Harry seems trapped in or
with her own feelings, even when context, musical
or otherwise, strikes to sabotage feeling of any
kind. In the infamous film The Last American
Virgin the girls put on a record and try to
dance with the boys; it's Blondie's "In The
Flesh" and Debbie wants to meet someone,
anyone, in the flesh, but the record crackles,
pops, skips, and finally tone arm comes away from
the vinyl with that fat fleshy zipping lost to
those who came to sentience later than 1988.
In
"Dreaming," which I consider Blondie's
finest song, the band takes the odd tack of
boosting the singer instead of contratextualizing
her brave cheer ("Suzy and Jeffrey") or
underscoring her frustration ("One Way Or
Another"). In fairness I've never studied
"Dreaming"'s lyrics for fear of
familiarity breeding ennui, and so the verses
always sung struggle to me ("we just walk on
by" the people staring at Debbie, and I see
her as Edie Sedgwick, striding across street
rabble with her "it" gown, heart
sloughing off in strips), and the chorus as what
she collapses into, safe in bed at night,
relaxing every muscle as she relaxes her voice,
as she would lounge several years later against
the electronic landscape of "French
Kissin'."
Surrenders to the
void occasionally bloom, of course, on a body of
work stretched so far across that decade that
demanded it. "Heart of Glass" might
have held some jokey grit back when it was called
"The Disco Song" but the version we
know from The Complete Picture and
elsewhere has no such thing except maybe the
"glass/ass" couplet and Clem Burke's
snare drum slipping X-Acto knifelike across the
pulse. More disturbing for holding more blood
"Rush Rush," tossed away onto the Scarface
soundtrack and duly kept out of the
"Picture." Against a three-note bass
riff gnawing like an inquisitor against Debbie's
on-liners, she finally gives into the groove and
whispers allegiance to the rush with the last
tender breath in her body. The film started with
people who'd already lost their souls, and
suffered from that truncation of perspective.
"Rush Rush," still ticking over on an
80's radio show somewhere out there, immersed one
soul in our dominant paradigm and let it
disintegrate, kicking. I'd like to see someone
make a movie about that kind of Hell.
Cargo Cult
Dept.: The following found stapled to a
telephone pole (a violation of Seattle ordinance)
three nights ago by my friend Harris, who works
graveyard at the Plaid Pantry. He thinks it might
be a prank. Decide for yourself.
"PLEASE
RETURN OUR BUS DOOR. Did you find a VW bus door
(driver's side) in your yard or help yourself to
one from ours? Despite its appearance it was not
meant to be thrown away! We need parts off of it.
Any info please call ___-____. or return to the
alley where you found it. Please help. We've been
working on this bus for five years and are nearly
finished and anxious to tour with the Dead."
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