I just watched The Mask for the first time in a decade. It is a charming film. And in a sense, I am more the target audience for the film than just about anything else I can think of. It appeals to all the prejudices of the kind of guy who thinks that he’s “nice” and walked around with a puppet on a stick for many of his teen years. And I still spend a fair amount of time watching Bugs Bunny. He is one of my heroes. And yes, he is a hare.

But as one gets older (if he is paying attention at all), one notices one’s prejudices. And the “nice guys finish last” trope has come to annoy me. It’s also, I’m afraid, really sexist. The truth is that men and women make terrible mistakes in their love lives. In my experience, nothing is as attractive as self-confidence. And it is often true that people who are self-confident are jerks. I suspect it works differently from the way many people think. Being highly desirable makes people self-confident, but it also makes them more selfish. It’s human nature.

Of course, in The Mask, Stanley Ipkiss is a truly nice guy. I say that because he likes cartoon and has a great dog that likes him. And what is sweet about the film is that Stanley wins the girl the way men have always won the girl: by allowing her to see past all the discomfort and pretense to who he really is. This is why the ending is so sweet with Tina Carlyle (played surprisingly well by Cameron Diaz) throwing away the mask. The truth is, Stanley’s unchecked id was a bit too much for her, but surely she likes knowing that it lives within him.

On a technical level, there are some problems with the film. But I doubt anyone watching the film for the first time notices. As soon as Dorian Tyrell (the bad guy, played by Peter Greene) gets the mask, the film stalls. I understand the problem. You can’t make Tyrell the wacky character that Ipkiss turned into. But the mask doesn’t bring out his naughty child; it just seems to turn him into a more angry version of himself. So those scenes are tiresome. What’s more, I’m afraid that Greene is miscast in the part, because he is too convincing a heavy.

But things do pick up, as Ipkiss breaks out of jail and eventually takes us to the climax of film that is as zany and wonderful as anything that came before. It just would have been a whole lot better to move faster from the point of reporter Peggy Brandt’s double-cross to Ipkiss’ escape. They could have trimmed five or even ten minutes from the film and sped into the third act without driving through a pothole that upsets a very consistent momentum throughout the rest of the film.

Really though: what’s not to love? Jim Carrey has never been so adorable. The script is the silliest of fun. And it has the cutest dog ever. I don’t know why I waited this long to watch it again.

It’s always a good time to talk about Jacques Brel. The years have not diminished my admiration for him. What is so great is that he doesn’t just sing. He acts the songs. He is, above all, a storyteller. And the stories that he tells are so filled with keen observations of the way the world is.

I understand that there are other artists who do this. Bruce Springsteen’s best work is like this, but usually he falls into cliche. Bobbie Gentry certainly managed this on a few songs. But American songwriters tend to disappoint. As much as I love the work of Warren Zevon and Randy Newman, they rarely succeeded in any given song. I think the problem is that American popular music, regardless of the form, is too dependent upon “slice of life” stories, with little payoff. It is extremely rare that a songwriter even tries to convey what we get from the best American short story writers like Irwin Shaw.

But Brel doesn’t just try—he succeeds. And he does it consistently. It doesn’t matter if he’s being serious or silly, he always has something to say. A good example of this comes from a song I really like, “Les Bourgeois”—a song that is both serious and silly. It tells the story of three friends: Jojo, Pierre, and the narrator. The first two verses tell of how they are drinking away their youth at the Three Pheasants Hotel bar. And when the older bourgeois pass by, the young men ridicule them in the chorus, “The bourgeois are like pigs!” And so on.

In the third verse, things are different. The three friends are now the bourgeois. They still have the same interests. They are still the same people. But they are old. And now there is a new generation of young people who ridicule them just as they ridiculed the generation before them. This is not exactly a startling denouement, although I think any reasonable person would admit that it has far more to say that most American pop songs. And that’s especially true coming from a man only 32 years old. (Brel wrote the lyrics; the music was written by Jean Corti.)

What’s more notable about the song is the way that Brel performs it. The entire tone of the third verse is different. It is a bit more stiff—the performance of man who knows he has to be dignified but still feels the same inside. And then, he doesn’t even sing the final chorus. This is the same chorus that was sung with such gusto the first two times, “The bourgeois are like pigs!” It is spoken with sense of disbelief, “Can you believe what these kids say to us?” It’s poignant and beautiful.

Here is the song. There are no subtitles, but I hardly think they are necessary:

One of my regular readers (JMF, I think Rick Fane, it turns out) turned me on to singer-songwriter Cheryl Wheeler. She is an amazing talent. But that’s pretty much a given when someone can stand up with a guitar and entertain an audience. She has a powerful, but interesting voice, and writes well-crafted, often deeply moving songs. She’s also very funny, which is not exactly unusual for folk singers. It may be just a matter of being more grounded than most musicians. And if you were as angry as a lot of folk singers are without a sense of humor, you’d probably go into political organizing.

I’m no kind of expert on her. I’ve heard perhaps a dozen or so of her songs. I’ll probably create a Pandora channel for her, because I am sometimes in the mood to listen to this kind of music. In general, she reminds me of Cris Williamson and Holly Near, although at this point I like her quite a bit more. Anyway, I came upon one of her songs, “Your God.” It is a very simple song, but the lyrics are funny and insightful. I’m thinking of learning it so I can play it for the Jehovah’s Witnesses the next time they come to my door. (Not that it would matter to them.)

Here are the lyrics:

Afterword

On a spiritual level, I’m with Terry Eagleton. If you look at the world or the Bible (or other Abrahamic religious books), there is no “God of love.” So at best, I can only see Jesus as calling for a spiritual revolution that would end with heaven on earth. The “God of love” would have to be ourselves, because nothing in the world points to a loving god. And indeed, apologists have given up on the question and simply define everything God does as good. So the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami that killed roughly 300,000 people was yet another example of “God’s love.” What makes Cheryl Wheeler’s song so great is that most of the people who believe in the “God of love” actually make the the world less “heaven on earth” and more just like hell.

[1] Tinky Winky was the character on Teletubbies who Jerry Falwell accused of being a gay role model for children.

I find myself haunted by “Ode to Billie Joe.” The weird thing about Bobbie Gentry is that she was a very good songwriter. Well, to be honest, her melodies often fell into the same patterns, but they always worked and could be quite original at times. And her lyrics were always quite strong. But nothing compares to “Ode to Billie Joe.” How do you top that? I don’t think people really wanted to hear anything but that song from her and she was right to retire from the business so soon. The irony is she might have had a better career if she hadn’t come out of the gate as she did.

Put simply, “Ode to Billie Joe” is a great work of art. It is a short story in song in the sense that it provides no more information than it has to. It has an introduction and a conclusion, but the meat of the song are the three middle verses that describe the reactions of papa, brother, and mama to the death of Billie Joe. The event affects papa as much as the news that the French were at war in Angola. Brother was acquainted with Billie Joe and is sad to hear the news, but it isn’t going to affect his life in any great way. The mama verse is the crux of the matter because it’s the one that makes clear that the death of Billie Joe is the most important event in the narrator’s entire life.

There are two ways to interpret mama’s verse. Either mama knows or she doesn’t. The way the song is written, the implication is that she doesn’t. But I find it hard to read it that way. She mentions the young preacher, who mama clearly hopes her daughter will marry. And clearly, mama and the preacher spoke about the them “dropping something off the Tallahatchie Bridge.” I imagine a conversation about how the daughter seems to be around Billie Joe a lot and maybe supper isn’t such a great idea. Regardless whether mama knows or not, she’s not saying anything.

The last verse is a year later and both of the men are gone. Brother has married and moved on with his life. Papa has died. So the two women are left distraught over the deaths of the men that they loved. Of course, mama doesn’t want to do anything. She’s probably spent over half her life with papa. There’s no romance in that. It’s just the story of every life. There is no future that she can see—no autumn romance—just marking time until she too dies. The narrator’s story is the more romantic, but she isn’t over her loss any more than her mother is. (A more positive take is to note that papa died in the spring, which means he’s only been dead for a couple of months. So you could see the final verse as showing mama in the early state of shock and grief that the narrator was in at the dinner table that sleepy, dusty Delta day. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter because it is the narrator’s story.)

Where the song ends could make a great beginning for a novel about a mother and a daughter and how they deal with their grief. I’m sentimental, so I imagine them growing closer, learning deep truths, and moving on with life. But what is great about the song is that it doesn’t resolve anything. For all we know, even after this year, mama still doesn’t know about the importance of Billie Joe to her daughter and has no idea that she spends a lot of time up on Choctaw Ridge paying tribute to his memory.

I understand why people wanted to make the song concrete. The song provides the emotional core and some tantalizing details. But the reason the song works so well and the film does not is because it doesn’t matter why Billie Joe killed himself; it doesn’t matter what they dropped off the bridge; it doesn’t matter what their relationship was. It matters that the narrator suffers in silence; it matters that her family is unintentionally cruel; it matters that someone—the only one who doesn’t speak—cared about Billie Joe and that he’s dead. To know more is to poison the song’s emotional purity.

It’s your fault America. Your the ones who like hyper-produced “cute” boys and girls performing your music. You’re the ones who want all real emotion and authentic humanity taken out of your music. You are the ones who have elevated just the right reverb on the digital snare drum above songwriting craft and inspiration. And above all, you’re the ones who have allowed auto-tune distortion to soil every mainstream hit for the last decade to the point where you think its a singing style and not an algorithm for fixing inaccurate singing. So it’s your fault and I want you to shut up about it.

The issue at hand is Britney Spears’ new single, “Alien,” which someone got released with the lead vocal track un-processed. Many are saying that the problem is that it hasn’t been auto-tuned. The producer claims it was just a test track, and so shouldn’t be judged as the kind of work that Ms Spears is capable of. I’m sure both of these claims are true. And there’s one more thing: Spears, like all the other purveyors of children’s music, does not have loads of other effects put on her voice here. But before listening to this track, bear in mind that her pitch problems are not primarily on those high notes that most people are freaking out about. I suspect that if it weren’t for those high notes, few would even have noticed. So again, America: it’s your fault because you have no taste, no maturity, and very little musical sense.

My take on the song is different. I think it’s the best thing she’s ever done. I just wish all the background music were taken away. With that vocal and an acoustic guitar, it would be terrible. But that would be a major step up from what most of my fellow Americans think passes for good music.

Now I’m going to present to you some good simple music. No, I’m not going to go back to Robert Johnson. Here is Camper Van Beethoven doing Take the Skinheads Bowling. It’s simple; it’s fun; and it’s pretty well in tune (not that it is critical):

Here is Devotchka with “The Clockwise Witness”:

Here is Jules Shear doing “The Trap Door”:

And here is the greatest punk band ever, Minutemen with “Two Beads at the End”:

I don’t care if you like any of that, America. But when you demand music that is created like television commercials, don’t be surprised when all the pieces aren’t perfect on their own. What you hear on “Alien” is an actual human voice. If you don’t like it, admit that it’s the technology you care about. Embrace your dehumanization.

I was shocked recently when frequent commenter JMF did not know who Jules Shear was. He’s a really well informed guy on most things that matter. So I followed up his comment with a few of Shear’s songs. And I started with the first song of his that I had ever heard, “Lovers By Rote” off the first Jules and Polar Bears album, Got No Breeding. It is a great album. In fact, it is one of the greatest. It still thrills me. For the decade that followed that, Shear tended to be produced as a New Wave artist and it never worked. Then his work went more in an acoustic direction that was much better. But still, the Polar Bears were the perfect band for him: unhinged rockers with Richard Bredice with wonderful gritty guitar solos. You should buy the album. Really.

But I was thinking, “Why was ‘Lovers By Rote’ the first Jules Shear song I had ever heard?” After all, it is the third song on the album. Well, it was because I was in this band when I was 18 with this “old” guy, Roger, who was 30 who played keyboards. Pretty much I wrote everything, because that is and was what I did. I mean, I’m an okay guitarist now, but I was horrible then. I was slightly better on the piano, but nothing compared to Roger who was actually kind of good.

Will was also in the band, where he destroyed his voice in really beautiful ways. He has always had a strong voice, but at that time he was a wild man. John Lydon had nothing on him. Anyway, Will and I were really very “interesting” and “edgy” and all that. And Roger didn’t know quite what to make of us, but what he did make of us was not good. I think he saw us as students or something. The only thing worse than our learning abilities were his teaching abilities.

Anyway, one day I brought in this song called, “Do You Like Life?” It was basically just logorrhea, “People don’t care left standing in the rain you left a puppy dog…” And so on. It was word collage with three verses and then a kind of chorus in the middle of it that was written in something bizarre like 4.5/5 time and it was basically chanted. At this point in my life I second guess everything but I didn’t then. I knew the song worked. Roger hated it.

But he didn’t hate it because he didn’t like the sound of it. He didn’t like it because you just didn’t do that sort of thing. Note, this is 1982. We are well into the post-punk movement. I listed to Gang of Four a lot in those days. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing to stop you from doing anything at all as long as it worked. And “Do You Like Life?” worked as well as anything else we did. In fact, I think some of the other songs we did were more challenging to listeners. (And compared to some of what I write today, it was downright charming; everyone hates what I do now.)

So a couple of days had gone by and Roger was really excited. He had found a song he had to share with me: “Lovers By Rote”:

Do you see?! You could just start chanting in the middle of a song because this guy on this album did it. I was 18, so I said, more or less, “Yeah, I knew I could do that because, you know, I did it.” But I loved the song, especially the refrain, “Stupid questions about love are the stupidest questions of them all.” Which now seems kind of appropriate because Roger asked a lot of stupid questions about music.

The band didn’t last much longer than that. For one thing, I know I was horrible to work with—I’m just too caught up in my own thing. There’s a reason why I’ve generally worked alone or with one other very understanding person. But the bigger problem was that Roger was far more interested in drinking than realizing my bizarre vision. Will and I went on to create our own duo. We tried to add other people, but anyone who could actually play had more or less the same reaction to our work that Roger did. They could tell we were onto something new, but that wasn’t necessarily good.

Maybe this is why I so treasure idiosyncratic art that isn’t necessarily technically good: pure protection of my own self-esteem.

Afterword

Here is the song “Too Soon Gone” from one of my favorite of Jules Shear’s solo albums, Allow Me: