"God gave rock and roll to you
Gave rock and roll to you
Save rock and roll for everyone"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=InH_9fbfma8
I had one of those days where every song on the radio triggered a memory. I got in this mood. I felt like I was thirteen years old.
I was going to write about "She's Not There". Everybody writes about "Time Of The Season", but really "She's Not There" was the breakthrough, "Time Of The Season" was just the comeback. We were infatuated with the British sound. One act after another reached us. Not only the Beatles, but Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas and Gerry and the Pacemakers. There was a darkness in this music, a resonance. Maybe because it was cut across the pond, by the sons of soldiers, some who came back from the war, some who didn't. It wasn't sunny Southern California. They were playing to escape. From the factories, from the drudgery. But all they could sing about was what they knew. They couldn't sing of being lonely surfer boys, rather just everyday life in a dank, dark country. And this music, it was dark too. It had shadows. And that's what entranced us. The sheer humanity.
MTV with the beautiful people, the posing? Completely different. What WAS going on in Brian Jones' head? Under that perfect blond coif? What had happened to him that he could make this sound? What had happened to ALL of them!
But then I got hooked on "I'm A Believer". It's not like the Monkees don't get enough ink. But unless you were alive that Christmas of '66, you have no IDEA how big that track was.
I guess I got started by listening to 20 on 20 on XM. All today's hits. I'd like to tell you the tracks are entrancing, enriching, but they truly are crap. Have you heard that Nickelback song "Rockstar"? Is that a parody? Must be. And then the African-American music, with the singer and the rapper and the drum machine. This shit is meaningless. It's always a guy apologizing for being the crude misogynist player he truly is, and a woman saying she'll...accept him? If this is a snapshot of modern life, we're fucked. And the people listening to this music, they have NO IDEA of the power of the song. Desperate fucks running record companies are just trying to make a buck. And the Top Forty radio stations who are their partners in crime... Like Mediabase COUNTS? Oh, don't e-mail me that the guys back then were interested in money too, OF COURSE they were, but something else was going on. Mickey Mantle liked getting paid, but that doesn't mean he wasn't an iconic baseball player.
And why is "I'm A Believer" SO magical?
Is it the organ?
Or Mickey Dolenz's vocal?
Or the cheesy handclaps and percussion? Or the background vocals?
"I'm A Believer" is a MASTERPIECE! It might have been conceived as fodder, but it's like building a Corvette, it might still be a GM car, but the sum of the parts is BEYOND anything else the company has ever constructed.
Were you a believer? I certainly was. And I don't think it was Monkeemania. It's just that this TUNE, you heard it once and you had to hear it FOREVER!
And I wanted to dissect "I'm A Believer". But I couldn't find the credits. Who played what. And realizing my MP3 collection was spotty, I fired up my P2P program to complete it.
And getting a few Monkees tracks at high speed, I looked in the purveyors' hard drives. And started downloading stuff I didn't even know I wanted. Seals & Crofts. White Plains. Paul Revere's "Steppin' Out On Me". And then I found a cache of Three Dog Night. I HATE "Joy To The World", but some of that stuff is good. I decided to complete my collection. And checking for duplicates after downloading, I wondered why I had THREE versions of "Liar". Okay, one was the album version, and another the single take. But why did I need TWO single takes? Then, upon closer inspection, I discovered that one was ripped at 256kbps. I decided to fire it up. To compare it to the version at 128.
"I won't ever leave
If you want me to stay
Nothing you can do
That can turn me away"
I met this woman. At a party. I hit on her to no avail. You see she was there with her live-in boyfriend, OF YEARS! But after he chatted me up, after she was done with me, after she returned and truly engaged me, she wanted my phone number, she wanted to CONTINUE!
I felt numb. Something had transpired. She left her boyfriend. She moved in with me. But it was too much, if she left him, couldn't she leave ME?
She stopped me on the sidewalk after I confronted her with this fact, that it was just too weird. She turned around and looked me directly in the eye and said I CHOSE YOU!
I protested no more.
"Hangin' on anyway
Believin' the things you say
And being a fool"
She told me she didn't want a divorce. Yet she never seemed to want to come back. Years passed. My friends burned out on the story. But I was married to her. I live up to my commitments.
"You've taken my life
Don't take my soul
That's what you said
And I believed it all"
I escaped. She was dragging me down the rabbit hole. BEFORE she left. You see she got me to the point where I accepted her untogetherness, her craziness. I stopped drawing a line, it was too frustrating. Some of my values collapsed, she didn't really trust anybody, and I became just like her. Still, the disconnection ripped out my heart. All that debt. All that longing. I edged ever closer to the line, and then slid over it.
"We have seen no night
We have seen no day
We are enemies
But you want me to stay"
I never fought with that woman. She wouldn't. If there's no fighting in your relationship, you're fucked. That just means your partner is afraid of voicing his or her opinion. There's a disconnection in your relationship. They've got one foot out the door, they're already existing partially on their own.
But the person before, we fought pretty good. To the point where it would take all day. She'd sleep on the couch, or make ME! But she never wanted to break up.
"You can believe in me
I won't be leavin'
I won't let you go"
Can you believe in ANYBODY? Is EVERYBODY subject to whims? Or, if not, are they just staying with you because they're desperate, fearful of being alone, and it really doesn't have much to DO with you?
Tell me when you find out. Oh, you might be married, you might think you know. I hope that lasts. But for so many it doesn't. You'll find yourself over fifty wondering what the hell life is ABOUT! Trusting no one.
"You've taken my life
Don't take my soul
That's what you said
But who are we to know
I want to be with you
As long as you want me to
So don't move away"
You build it in your brain, you construct a map of the relationship, what was said, what it all means. I became convinced she didn't want to break the connection, I didn't want to press for a divorce.
"Ain't that what you said?
Ain't that what you said?
Ain't that what you said?
Liar!
Liar! Liar!"
It doesn't matter what they say. It just matters what they do.
She eventually called me up half a decade on, whilst living with another guy, to ask for forgiveness. FUCK THAT!
I'd like to tell you I've got this life figured out. But the more I go to the shrink, the more questions I have. Like relationships... Are they ever perfect? Do I demand that they be perfect? Do I have to learn to just hang in there? Is it about the person, the connection, or ME?
I think I was looking for perfection back then. In the sixties. After some uncomfortable interludes with the opposite sex, after the rejection. I depended on the music to get me through.
The Zombies morphed into Argent, and I was a fan. I bought the album with "Hold Your Head Up", but never the one with "Liar". I couldn't afford it and barely heard it. And I can count on one finger how many times I heard the Three Dog Night cover. But I never forgot the song, it's that kind of track.
When I discovered Napster in 2000, the very first track I took was Argent's "Liar".
Now at this point, you can buy "Liar" on iTunes. But that's missing the point. Because I don't want only the Argent "Liar", but the Three Dog Night take too, both the album and single versions. And I want KISS' "Lick It Up", and if you add up all the shit I want to own, I can't afford it.
God might have given rock and roll to everyone, but the labels want to make sure they don't have it. But, stunningly, SEVEN YEARS ON, there's a Napster facsimile, that gives you a taste, a waft of the feeling.
Go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTHa2Hu7t6U
It's not the version I'm hearing in my headphones right now. Not the studio take, but a live one, from YEARS LATER! But this is just the kind of shit I scoured Napster for. I don't need to SEE these renditions, I just need to hear them. You see, music goes in the EARS!
You said you were protecting the rights of artists. That there would be no music if Napster was legalized. You said you had to sue traders to protect your rights.
LIAR! LIAR!
If YouTube can be monetized, P2P can be monetized. So more people can own more music, so more people's lives can be enriched, so they can have tunes to get them through the hard times. Toss away a Top Forty world, embrace discovery.
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