“Play Guitar” and “Serious Business” have all the muscle of “Crumblin’ Down,” and “Serious Business” features a cool chorus that goes, “This is serious business/Sex and violence and rock and roll.” “Warmer Place to Sleep” almost sounds like a Ronnie Wood-era Rolling Stones’ number, and features some Bible-themed lyrics alongside Crane’s wiry guitar. This is your basic garage rock with the fundamentals perfected and every song falling into unassailable lockstep. The LPs’ best numbers-and I don’t hear any losers-are driven by the amazing drumming of Kenny Aronoff and the excellent guitar work of Larry Crane. And he sings, “Growing up leads to growing old and then to dying/And dying to me don’t sound like all that much fun.” The man makes Arthur Schopenhauer look like an optimist. “Ain’t that America for you and me/Ain’t that America something to see?” sings Mellencamp, and he’s telling us that we’ve all been sold a bill of goods. I see no reason to talk about “Pink Houses” or “Authority Song” or “Crumblin’ Down.” If you don’t know them you’ve been dead since 1981, and if you don’t like them shame on you. And to make things even better, the songs never fail to boast catchy melodies. The last refers to “Golden Gates,” a truly beautiful and anthemic ode that almost contains a strain of hope, when Mellencamp sings, “Only promises I know to be true/Are promises made from the heart.”īut aside from “Golden Gates” and “Jackie O,” a love song and collaborative effort with John Prine that is sweet and slow and is driven by some wonderfully simple Holiday Inn lounge keyboards (or vibes, I’ll be damned if I can tell the difference), the LP is knock-down, stripped to the basics, gut-bucket rock’n’roll. On 1982’s Uh-Huh, Mellencamp cynically lets us know that we’ve all been sold a bill of goods that has landed us in cookie-cutter pink houses in the spiritually dead suburbs, that you can fight the law but will never win, that in the end you’ll trade in your dreams for a warmer place to sleep, and there ain’t no golden gates gonna swing open, not in this life. Mellencamp is most certainly not out to sell fairy tales. Take “Jack and Diane.” You can call it hokum, a clichéd look at growing up horny in the heartland of America and all that, but its core message (“Oh yeah, life goes on/Long after the thrill of living is gone”) is as dark as anything dished out by the likes of Lou Reed or Bob Dylan. He sees what he sees and he’s not happy about it. He understands that our forefathers talked about the Pursuit of Happiness, but were wise enough to remain mum about the possibility of ever catching the slippery fucker. Mellencamp casts a gimlet eye at such things as Hope and the American Dream and smirks because he knows they fall short. Anyway, what I’ve always liked the most about the fellow who started out calling himself John Cougar is that he’s a curmudgeon. Sure, I’ve been known to call him the poor man’s Bruce Springsteen, but I mean it as a compliment.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |