Real Life Rock (47 page)

7
Michael Barson,
Rip It Up!—Postcards From the Heyday of Rock 'n' Roll
(Pantheon)
Made from movie posters, sheet music, concert programs, and fan magazines, notably
Tommy Sands vs. Belafonte and Elvis
. Barson's I.D.: “Sands had one fairly huge hit early in 1957, ‘Teen-Age Crush,' and never saw the Top Ten again, though he did marry Nancy Sinatra. Brooklyn-born Harry Belafonte fared better, with several calypso-flavored hits in 1956 and '57, and a long life as an LP artist who appealed to an older audience. Elvis had a few hits, was drafted, then returned to driving a truck for Crown Electric in Memphis and was never heard from again.”

8
Rolling Stones,
Detroit
(bootleg, 1969)
The songs are slowed down, cut to cadence almost like marches; they hover, like prophecies remembered generations after they were delivered; you hear only the singer, who seems scared of his own power, and the guitarists, who revel in theirs, “ ‘We Didn't Really Get It On Until Detroit'—M. Jagger,” it says on the sleeve—which, 20 years later, sort of begs the question.

9
Bob Dylan,
Oh Mercy
(Columbia)
Producer's record, shapely and airless. Featuring Daniel Lanois as the director who likes to chalk marks on the floor and Dylan as the actor who has to hit them.

10
Neil Young, “Rockin' in the Free World” (electric), from
Freedom
Well over 40, like most of the people starring in this column, Young alone among them uses his past for context, not careerism. Mick Jagger sings “Satisfaction” today because there's money in it, and no doubt; at his best Young always sounds as if he's ready to blow every dollar on what he has to say. Here, with lyrics left out of the Jones Beach version, he erases Ronald Reagan and lets George Bush be his own man: the cadaverous face of his silent crimes. More to the point, it's Young's best ride since “Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze” on
Re·ac·tor
eight years ago, which in the time frame Young creates means nothing at all.

DECEMBER
12, 1989

1
Howlin' Wolf, “Rollin' and Tumblin',” from
Killing Floor
(Chess, Japan, out of print)
One minute of the primeval from the great electric bluesman. The only accompaniment here is acoustic guitar; no band could match the broken country time. The guitarist is unnamed, the date unlisted, there's no other known Wolf recording like it, but there must be more. Where?

2
KALX, pledge-drive spots (FM 90.7, University of California at Berkeley, November 10)
“Hello,” says a creamy phone-sex voice. “I'm your
Pledge Mistress
. . . . If
you'd like to make a
donation
, press one. If you need
encouragement
to
leave your deposit
, press. . . .” Even better was an evangelist, droning on and on in plummy, pukey tones about the final struggle between the Mammon of “Commercial Radio” and the holiness of “Listener-Supported Radio,” his syntax impossibly garbled by insensate repetition and the slow train of his mind.

3
David Remnick and Marc Fisher, dispatch on the resignation of the Czechoslo-vakian Communist Party presidium
(
Washington Post
,
November 25)
“Taxi drivers led a manic procession through Wenceslas Square, honking their horns. A man carried a victory cake to the center of the celebration. All around, people were lighting firecrackers and sparklers. A single trumpeter, like the leader of a New Orleans jazz wedding, led a few hundred people up the promenade.”

4
MTV, graphic (November 12)
Picture: the Berlin Wall. Soundtrack: electric version of Neil Young's “Rockin' in the Free World.” Title: “
ANOTHER BAD IDEA BITES THE DUST
.” And another irony buried under it.

5
Elizabeth Shogren, “A New Political Generation”
(
San Francisco Chronicle
,
November 25)
“Anne-Kathrin Pauk, 23, an elementary school teacher and publicist for the Berlin branch of a fledgling political party, exemplifies the role played by the younger generation in East Germany's fast-paced reforms. ‘A lot of my friends already left, but now my friends are deciding to stay and try to change our country,' said Pauk. . . . Pauk has brought her own style into her classroom. At the start of each class period in East Germany, pupils stand erect and report to their teacher in military fashion. The first day of her class, Pauk made it clear that she was different. After the pupils reported in their usual way, she stood at attention and sang the American song ‘We're in the Army Now.' Then she translated the words for her astonished, giggling pupils. Her students no longer report at the beginning of class.”

6
Actuel,
sponsorship of pirate radio station off the coast of the People's Republic of China
Yes, they'll probably be playing “Rockin' in the Free World,” but as the sound of the Beatles' “Revolution” said “rise up” even when the words said “don't,” the sound of Young's attack on our version of the Free World may simply say that when you can bring sound to this level, you're free.