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July 25, 2006

Gloriously Arrested

A few weeks back, JB Doubtless commented on a Soul Asylum gig he'd attended.

Soul Asylum. I had little idea they were still playing. (Actually, googling around I notice that Michael Bland is drumming for them. He'll be turning up in a "Twenty Years Ago Today" in about five months here...).

I never liked Soul Asylum much. Oh, they were all right - I used to shoot the odd game of pool with Dan Murphy and/or Karl Mueller at the CC Club back when you could still meet musicians there, when I was still knocking around the music scene, and I liked a few songs here and there, and they were great live - but they were no Replacements.

So seeing them performing wouldn't really grab me now.

But JB's bit got me thinking about something that did smack me upside the head a few months back.

There's Dan Murphy. He looks like he did in 1991. He's still wearing thrift store clothing and the ubiquitous Chuck Taylors. Does he dress this way every day? I think he does. That isn't a stage outfit. The man is in his forties and he's still making some kind of statement with his duds. Sigh. He doesn't seem to be very happy to be playing tonight. There's Pirner. Talented guy, no doubt and he's thankfully lost the dreads from years back, but I wonder if it feels odd at all to be still singing songs of angst and depression and frustration--teenage themes--when you're over 40.
Maybe.

VH1's Bands Reunited last year undertook an effort to reunite The Alarm, the greatest band ever to a hail from Wales.

The Alarm - they of the gloriously overwrought bombastic lyrics, feverishly adolescent energy and hair that put Kajagoogoo to shame, were one of my favorite bands of the early-mid eighties; while their flaming-red socialist lyrics drew the odd giggle from this blooming Reaganite, they were still everything Rock and Roll was supposed to be; something that grabbed you by the liver and hauled you out on the dance floor.

Of course, that was twenty years ago. Here they are in 1983

Edde McDonald, Nigel "Twist" Buckle, Mike Peters, Dave Sharp, and 200 uncredited cans of hairspray.

And here they were on "Bands Reunited" last year:

Peters, Twist (Jamestown people - if you see the video, you'd wonder if it was Mad Dog), McDonald (No, not Dr. Jonez) and Sharp.

So I was thinking about the Alarm on TV when I read JB's bit - and it occurred to me...well, we'll get back to that part.

The highlight of "Bands Reunited" (if a performance by, say, Dramarama or New Kids on the Block can be called a highlight) is the climactic performance by the reunited group. And I loved this part; the Alarm is doing their anthem...

...scratch that. The Alarm did nothing but anthems. They were friggin' exhausting to listen to, because every single dadgummed song required you to get up and shake your fist and/or butt and stay at a fever pitch for two friggin' hours.

But I digress again. They were performing "68 Guns" - not my favorite of their bazillion anthems (you can't tell me "Marching On" and "The Stand" weren't better), but a good one.

And in the breakdown in the middle (another thing the Alarm tacked onto every blessed song they ever did, live), Peters looks around at his twenty-year-older band - McDonald the bassist-turned-mild-mannered paralegal; Sharp, with whom he'd spent most of the nineties feuding - as he sang the lyric:

"nothing lasts for ever - that's all they seem to tell you when you're young.
And then he ad-libbed:
But not tonight..."
And the crowd went wild.

So why does Dan Murphy wear slummy shirts and Chuck Taylors when he's actually 44 years old and works as a social studies teacher?

Because that's his job. When he gets on the stage under the moniker "Soul Asylum", his job is to take a legion of his fans back to whereever they were when that kind of thing mattered to them.

Oh, people like Mike Peters and Dan Murphy - and Mick Jagger, for that matter - may not see it that way. They probably think they have some new sod to turn in the world of music. They might even be right. But most rock and roll acts - the ones that don't flame out in a drunken, drug-sodden fog at age 25 - have to eventually deal with the fact that they are products of a moment in time for a group of people who were at the right age and place in their lives to have that moment in the first place, and that whatever they created isn't going to mean a lot for people who weren't in and of that moment. If they're talented and supernaturally lucky (Madonna, Springsteen) they can stretch that moment far beyond the norm, or at least do "nostaligia" rock with style (Mick Jagger).

And if they're Dan Murphy or Mike Peters or Joe Grushecky, they can come around and play, and all of us who loved them the first time around can get a twinge of what it was like, the first time around.

It doens't last forever. But not tonight.

Posted by Mitch at July 25, 2006 07:06 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Mitch, through some strange bit of synchonicity, Spirit of '76 is playing on Music Choice right now. Did you happen to see the Alarm in St Paul in 2001?

Posted by: Peder at July 25, 2006 08:42 AM

I saw Soul Asylum in Duluth whent they were at their peak in popularity (Grave Dancers Union). Everyone who was cool and between the ages of 20 and 30 was there that night. It was a great show with lots of beer.

Saw them in 2001 at the Fine Line. I was expecting to experience the same thing I did a few years before in Duluth. They were okay, but it just wasn't the same. Sometimes your moment passes rather quickly.

Posted by: Dave at July 25, 2006 09:39 AM

I saw Soul Asylum in Duluth whent they were at their peak in popularity (Grave Dancers Union). Everyone who was cool and between the ages of 20 and 30 was there that night. It was a great show with lots of beer.

Saw them in 2001 at the Fine Line. I was expecting to experience the same thing I did a few years before in Duluth. They were okay, but it just wasn't the same. Sometimes your moment passes rather quickly.

Then I saw that they played at a Walter Mondale rally in 2002 and realized they were way past cool.

Posted by: Dave at July 25, 2006 09:41 AM

Mitch might find this interesting... the New Your Dolls are releasing a new CD - well, at least Johanson and Sylvain.

It's not as raw as the early stuff they did in the 70's but it sounds pretty damn good.

http://media.roadrunnerworld.com/NewYorkDolls/newyorkdolls-tommy.wmv

Posted by: Doug at July 25, 2006 08:31 PM
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