Styx vs. Monkees: A never ending conflict

Ok, I did watch the fan produced ending for How I Met Your Mother today and if you had shown that to me yesterday and told me that it was the real ending I would have thought, “Aw, what a sweet ending.” It would have been a happy ending for everyone, or at least Ted. You still have to figure out Barney and Robin and Marshall and Lilly but you could make them all happy in the end. In a sense I like the fact that they did not make it nice and neat because life is certainly not and neither has been Ted’s life. But that said, the more I watch the original ending the more it seems totally off. That is what happens when you are writing to scenes filmed by child actors seven years ago. At some point you can accept that you should change plans.

Anyway, I wanted to tell the story tonight of how I am a hypocrite in general and especially when it comes to music. If I am nice this is just an example of how I can be a bit of an arrogant snob but at worse it shows some of the lesser side of my personality. Either way it is a pretty fun story.

So a few weeks ago someone asked me if I wanted to go see Styx in concert and my response was a) laughter and b) “why would you want to see a band without their lead singer and where half of the band is dead.” Now let me start by saying that I really like Styx. I actually owned Kilroy was Here on cassette. They are a Chicago band and two of the band members lived in the suburbs in the same neighborhood as kids from my high school. Hell, when my sister was in high school the school won a radio concert which gave the students free tickets to see Styx. I can’t say that they are my favorite band of all time but I did grow up on their music.

But with all that I have no desire to see them in their present form. Dennis DeYoung is no longer the lead singer because the rest of the band hates him and it is hard to think of Styx without him. Tommy Shaw is still a good guitarist and probably worth seeing but it isn’t Styx. It’s Tommy Shaw, one or two of the other original members, and a bunch of other guys filling in roles. I didn’t want to spend money to see the show. I didn’t care that it would be silly fun. I pretty much shot it down as the dumbest idea I had ever heard and that was before I found out it was a double bill with Foreigner.

Fast forward a few days and I check my email to see that Ticketmaster has let me know about the latest shows scheduled for Kansas City (most likely on the hope that I would start buying tickets again as I believe that my moving resulted in a significant hit to their profit margin). In the email I found out that the Monkees are playing at the Uptown Theater. Not only was I getting ready to buy concert tickets I was ready to buy plane tickets, get a hotel room, and then camp outside the front door of the Uptown for a week ahead of the show so I could be in front of the stage. Oh, and while I was camped out there I would be getting signatures for my petition for the Monkees to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Of course this makes absolutely no sense. Davy Jones died a few years back so it is clearly not the Monkees of old. Even with Mike Nesmith there we are missing the heart of the band and everyone is older and let’s face it, they never played their own instruments to begin with so it is not like they have gotten any better. But it’s the Monkees! I grew up on their music. It would be a lot of silly fun.

So I’m a hypocrite. One band from the seventies reunites and I consider it a personal affront that it would even be suggested that I see them in concert. Another band from the sixties, one that was created solely for a television show, reunites and I am willing to travel across the country to see them play at a venue that is conveniently located across the street from a place where you can sell your blood plasma. If I was internally consistent I would probably be a lot easier to live with.

Wednesday Night Music Club: Nothing makes life better than a new Drive By Truckers album.

When are you really you

I mentioned a week or two ago how Jonathan Carroll is one of my favorite writers and that he also has the best Facebook posts of anyone I know. He'll post strange images and quotes and ideas that just strike his fancy. It is like a constant stream of brilliance. You never know what he is going to discuss but you can almost guarantee that it will be staying with you for a while.

One of the things he posted recently was how he was thinking about the question he is often asked "Where I should I get started in reading your work." He's written novels and short stories over decades and it is sometimes daunting to wonder just where to begin. Do you start with his first novel, do you read what people consider to be his best, do you grab his most recent and relevant work or is it somewhere in between.

He didn't answer that question but instead asked the following: "If you were to introduce someone to yourself when would you have them meet you?" Meaning at what age, at what moment in your life were you the truest version of yourself. When you look back at your life at what point do you say, "If you met me then you would know all my dreams and fears, all of my hopes and desires, you would know exactly who I am."

What an amazing question. I've spent weeks going back and forth with myself as to what my answer would be. It is tempting to say the end of high school or the beginning of college because that is when you are optimistic and energetic and feel like you are the most important being in the world. Except that looking back at myself I am embarassed by who I was, how uncool I was and how I was stumbling trying to figure out who I was. I had a vision and I had good intentions but I'm not sure if it would represent who I would become, for better or for worse.

Likewise I'm not sure if I would want someone to meet the current version of me and state that this is who I am, even though I am doing everything I possibly can to continue to improve whatever it is that I am. Life knocks you down as the years go by and even though you continue to get back up your skin grows more and more calloused. I'm more cynical than I was when I was younger and not in the hipster sense. It's a negative, depressing type of cynicism that I am trying to change. I don't think you can know who I am without understanding those hopes and dreams that I had that now lie much farther underneath the surface.

Maybe there isn't one moment when you are truly you. The act of observing effects the observed. We are continually changing and evolving and unless you have been along for the entire journey you can't understand the full story. Maybe it is just that we should strive every day to be who we truly are. To express what it is to be us. It is a challenge, though.

Sunday Night Music Club: I'm trying to get back into music and posting videos. Mainly this will mean lots of Drive By Truckers songs. Not a bad way to start.

2010 Movie Preview

Time to take a look at what we’ll be seeing at the old Drive-In this year. Or will be picking up through Netflix later. Or just pirating off of some website hosted in the third world. One of those options.

Alice in Wonderland: As done by Tim Burton. I was going to make a joke about how Hollywood apparently has no new ideas and are now just grabbing books from their children’s bedroom at random but Tim Burton doing Alice in Wonderland? That just sounds super cool. Like I need to start taking drugs now to just be in the proper state of mind when it opens in March.

Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps: Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas are back with Shia LaBeouf in this tense financial….wait a minute. I am supposed to believe that Shia LaBoeuf is a Wall Street trader? I couldn’t believe that he had a transforming car. Not that I don’t believe in transforming cars just that I couldn’t believe that he would know how to operate a normal one. Not sure if anyone is clamoring for a sequel here or why the movie just couldn’t have a different name. Wall Street 2 just looks completely wrong as a title.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: Movies based on video games always worry me mainly because movies do not come with cheat codes. That and the entire reason that a video game is good is because it is interactive and what makes a movie great is that it isn’t. You can’t marry the two and no video game has a deep enough backstory to really merit a movie.

Iron Man 2: Come for the explosions, stay for Scarlett Johansson as sexy Russian double agent Black Widow. Or come for Scarlett Johansson and stay for Mickey Rourke as Whiplash I really don’t mind. Now that Spider-Man is getting rebooted this might be the best superhero franchise out there.

Sex and the City 2: They’re all in a nursing home by now, right? This is like a pilot for the new version of The Golden Girls. Actually the similarities between the casts of Sex and the City and The Golden Girls are quite remarkable. Four women each, clear similarities between the two (Sarah Jessica Parker and Bea Arthur are, for all intensive purposes, the same character) on a constant search for romance. I think there might be a doctoral thesis in that argument.

Clash of the Titans: I could use this as a starting point to complain about Hollywood co-opting my childhood but I am more excited that this will teach a whole new generation of kids Greek mythology. Watching this movie over and over again helps you in high school when you are forced to read the Odyssey and have to remember all of the various gods. Two problems with a remake though. 1) No Harry Hamlin and 2) the fact that the original was a PG movie that featured nudity really cannot be copied in today’s environment.

The A-Team: Ok, now they are mining my childhood. What no one realizes is that the A-Team is one of those shows that everyone loved but no one actually watched for any reason other than a few random explosions and Mister T saying a few things. It’s not like we cared about the plot or anything. A remake will give us explosions but no Mister T and we can get explosions anywhere. It would be more cost effective to just have people show up at Mister T’s house and have him talk to them for ninety minutes.

The Karate Kid: With Jackie Chan as Pat Morita and Wil Smith’s kid as Ralph Macchio. Sigh. I’m sorry but there is no way that this movie is going to touch the original because Jackie Chan is not Pat Morita. I’m not talking in terms of acting skills though that is the case. The fact is that the story works so much better as having the mysterious old man who viewers know only as the guy who used to work at Mel’s Diner teaching karate than having the martial arts expert teaching karate. I don’t expect Wil Smith’s kid to come from behind to win the tournament. I expect him to win by defeating forty ninjas and jumping off the top of a building and on to a moving bus.

Tron Legacy: If there is anything we need it is more Tron. A lot more Tron. I want a freaking light cycle. It’s been nearly thirty years and they still haven’t made a light cycle. What a bunch of crap. That is science for you. Just can’t get its priorities in order.

6th Best Album of the Decade: Drive-By Truckers “The Dirty South” (2004): This is one of those albums that I did not listen to for years after it first came out. I had always heard great things about DBT, a hard rocking Southern band that had three killer guitarists up front driving song after song. It wasn’t after until I started really listening to their music that I realized just how incredible the songwriting was. The stories that these guys tell are spellbinding. This is the last album from the Jason Isbell era, which is where I felt they peaked.

Southern rock opera

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m addicted to Ticketmaster. It’s a rather horrible addiction. My bartenders don’t charge me a five dollar service fee just so I can have a beer. Heck, I get special privileges just because they know that I am the bar’s profit margin. Ticketmaster rakes me over the coals every time and thanks me by offering me a chance at getting backstage passes to Kenny Chesney, which would be good only if they came with the opportunity to knee Kenny Chesney in the groin.

Basically I go to a lot of concerts. Some, like Wilco, are for bands that I have been following for a decade and have every note they’ve ever recorded. Last night was a little different. Last night I went to see Drive By Truckers, a band that I had heard incredible things about but had never actually seen. Or possibly even listened to. I think I may have heard a song of theirs once. In my mind, that’s enough to drive out to Lawrence.

(In a driving rainstorm no less. It’s always fun to be driving on a road you can’t technically see. I did pass one semi that was lying on its side on the side of the road. Police and ambulance were already there, as was a local news crew featuring a reporter who looked like she would rather not be out in the rain.)

Drive By Truckers are known as a southern rock band. That is how critics will describe you after you release a two disc rock opera based on Lynyrd Skynyrd. The band isn’t just a quasi tribute to the Van Zandts, their music is a lot deeper than that. I was really impressed by the lyrics, which were out of this world at times. For a loud show (and I was next to the sound board where the guy had a dB meter with him) featuring a band with interesting facial hair, you would not expect lyrics that could really be described as poetic in the tragic southern Faulknerian sense of the term.

Two things that will stay with me from the show. First off, the band took the stage with a bottle of Jack Daniels. I don’t think that’s a first for me. The fact that before they started the set they handed the bottle amongst themselves and all downed swigs from it was impressive. Continuing to pass it around during the set was even more so. By the end of the set the band was lit but seemed to improve as they went along.

The second part was that they had a three guitar attack that just blew me away. Now as much as I’m a music critic (at least in my own mind) I am not big on the technical aspects of music. I’ve always explained it as I’m a writer so I can understand how challenging it is to write meaningful lyrics. I can’t play guitar so the difference between bad guitar playing and good and amazing really isn’t that big in my mind. But this was out of this world good. I would actually watch their hands to try to figure out who was playing which part. It wasn’t “two guys strum, one guy solos.” You basically had three solos going on simultaneously and it worked. I really wish I could have seen them when they still had Jason Isbell in the band. That must have been insane.

Great show, really glad I went. Not the typical Wednesday night and I missed trivia but sometimes you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. Have a great weekend everyone.