The Darker Half

DC, November 2009, 1,225 words

Last weekend I went up to the north of England to see two married friends of mine called Olly and Charlie, who recently moved up there to a city called Sheffield. I have written about both of them before, they are two of my best friends in the world, and something we’ve always had in common is a love of Halloween. This festival hasn’t traditionally been celebrated in England but we’ve always loved it, and have tried to ensure that whatever we are doing we celebrate it together every year. For Charlie, Halloween is doubly important as it coincides with what is for her a major religious festival. She is a very spiritual person but not one who feels comfortable with any of the major modern religions, so she pursues her own brand of neopaganism, choosing to glorify ancestors and the power of nature and the Earth. In her system, the end of October marks the festival of Samhain, or “summer’s end”. Samhain marks the passage from summer (or the “lighter half” of the year) to autumn and winter.

While I was with them, I was fortunate enough to be allowed to sit on a small ceremony that Charlie was having to mark Samhain. As part of this, Charlie asked us to write down on a piece of paper one thing that we wish to continue doing in the following part of the year, and one thing that we would like to “leave behind” as the seasons change. We then rolled the papers up and burned them in a candle flame, with the burning formally marking the transition from one stage of life to the next. This seemed to perfectly capture the sense that many of us get at this time of year, as the leaves fall from the trees and the days get darker for winter – that just as nature is changing, somehow so are we.

Given how powerful this feeling can be, it’s not surprising that many artists have chosen to incorporate it into their work. There are myriad paintings and photographs that try to capture the tipping point between the lighter and dark halves, and many songs have been written about it. Some of them are quite literal, attempting simply to capture the beautiful yet haunting quality of this particular time and the feelings that it engenders. However, others use the changing seasons as a metaphor that allows them explore issues of change in life and sentiment. There have been two examples of this in 2009, with the onset of autumn explored both by 1990s rock survivors Third Eye Blind (3EB) and spiky post-pop-punkers Taking Back Sunday (TBS). The songs are fascinating to listen to together as they capture perfectly the different ways in which we can be impacted by nature and the Earth.

3EB, in their song Summer Town, have written an elegy to times past, and to things swept away as the clock rolls forward. The central theme of the song is our frequent quest to hang onto the those times in our lives that we come to identify as perfect, or as close to perfection as we get – times that inevitably have a limited lifespan. Singer Stephan Jenkins talks fondly of an “old beach house, where we stood outside and sang out loud”, and how he “remembers the time that we drew a crowd and / I told you everything I knew in a manic rushing line”. Most of all, he wants the audience for his narration to know that “you gave me more than you took from me” – but therein is the problem. Whatever time he is recalling it is firmly in the past tense, with time having moved on since. Indeed, he records what changes have happened in detail, ranging from wistful remembrance (“Hey! Where did everybody go? / Everyone I know has blown the coast”) to desperate sadness (“’cause after Halloween / everything starts fading / I’m losing everyone / I go down like the sun”). However, Jenkins is not so self-absorbed as to assume that he’s the only one who feels this way, noting repeatedly that “you know what I mean”, and proposing a joint way forward, suggesting that “last summer is done / can we find another one? / Find another one?”.

In contrast, TBS very much pick up on the other side of the Samhain feeling, the desire to leave things in the past and move on, to put distance between yourself and difficult or troubling times. In contrast to the more reflective, nostalgic vibe of “Summer Town”, their own “Summer, Man” is a spiteful kiss-off to a season and all it brought. The specific object of the venom is never made explicit (though speculation has suggested that it could be about lead singer Adam Lazarra’s ex-wife, or the former TBS guitarist Fred “The Colour Fred” Mascherino), but that doesn’t matter – we can all identify regardless. We have all been through times or met people that we’d rather forget. “Summer, Man” seems to be trying to fast forward time rather than rewind it, to skip “June until September, three months to December”. Not only does the song express no nostalgia for the past, it actively denies that any such feeling should be reflected on a hard time, with Lazarra noting sarcastically that “let’s have a talk about the good times / oh boy, you were always giving in”. Any distance that can be put between present and past is encouraged, with Lazarra stating with a sense of relief that “the summer is over and I doubt / I doubt I’ll be seeing you around” – indeed, the past has already begun to fade from a vivid experience to a “black and white type” about which much is indistinct but the venom remains vivid.

The differing thematic content of the songs is embodied in the music as well as the lyrics. To support their narrative 3EB opted for quite a laid-back strummed tune with a campfire-singalong vibe. This low-fi sound complements the imagery of the song perfectly – you can almost hear the floorboards creaking when Stephan Jenkins songs about the “old beach house”. When taken together the music and lyrics transport you to your own version of the place that Jenkins has in his mind, and you come away knowing and understanding exactly what he went through. At the opposite end of the spectrum, TBS go hard on “Summer, Man”, which is a real turned-up-to-11 jam. The song passes in a headlong rush forward, as if the band is trying to accelerate time. The drums clatter round and over each other and guitars jab and spar, until the end of the song. Suddenly, just as things are drawing to a close, all of the instruments lock into a chugging rhythm, creating a sense that life is returning to normal after the chaos of the preceding season.

In a way, it’s nice to have another reminder that artists have the same preoccupations that we do, that they also struggle with the adjustment from the lighter half to the darker half. It’s no stretch to imagine that there are singers and songwriters, artists and directors, people of all kinds sitting in their living rooms and studies, thinking about the coming of winter and, just maybe, burning their own rolled-up papers in a Samhain flame.

He Did It All For The Tony

DC, 29^th October 2009, 1,575 words including footnotes

The fact that a theatrical musical is being written about the lives and careers of Run-DMC will probably only appeal to three types of people: serious hip-hop heads, the conspiracy theorists who think that Jam Master Jay was killed by the FBI, and serious potheads. I’m not sure which of those camps I fall into, but I found this news totally fascinating. During the past few years I have been vaguely aware of the trend of turning the back catalogues of musical acts into stage shows. In London, where I live, we have been offered the chance to see “songbook shows” about Abba (“Mamma Mia”), Queen (“We Will Rock You”), Blondie (“Desperately Seeking Susan”) and many others. However, these shows all seemed aimed at an older generation of music fans, and as such didn’t hold much interest for me. Plus, by all accounts the majority of them were awful - but when I read about the Run-DMC plans my immediate reactions were “that would be awesome” and “I really think that their songs and story might work as a musical”. This got me thinking… what is it that makes a songbook show successful and satisfying? And why do some shows fail despite boasting fantastic bodies of song, while others get by despite the underlying music being inherently sketchy[1]?

After a very serious scientific investigation consisting of me chatting with friends, watching the first 10 minutes of “Mamma Mia” before being overcome with concern about the future of the human race, and pondering the aforementioned Jam Master Jay death mystery, I think I’ve come up with three broad rules. Follow these, and your songbook show will at least draw a crowd proportional in size to the popularity of the band that you base it on[2]. Fail to observe them, and your all-singing, all-dancing mash-up of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the musical stylings of Vanilla Ice will probably never make it to Broadway…

Rule 1: The group you select must actually have good songs. Obvious, but we all have a band that on a rational level we know really sucks, but are inexplicably attached to anyway. So while a Run-DMC show might work, a Cobra Starship one probably won’t. You don’t want to hire a 50-person chorus just to have them sing that weird backing vocal from “Good Girls Go Bad”.

Rule 2: The artist should have songs that vary in mood and tone. A good musical has to have different types of song if it is to work – the crowd-pleasing hands in the air numbers, the ballads, the introspective jams. With all due respect to Soulja Boy, an entire show of party jams or braggadocious bitches n’ bling tunes would get boring pretty quickly[3].

Rule 3: In an ideal world, the career of the artist or the content of their songs should provide a ready-made narrative arc for the show. So Run-DMC might work as they had such an incredible career journey. Bruce Springsteen would work, as you could easily construct an everyman character would could sing all of his songs and have them sound personal. This isn’t as absolute a rule as the others – “We Will Rock You” set the songs of Queen in an absolutely ludicrous futuristic narrative about oppression and… well, sexual conquest in space[4].

Based on these rules, we can begin to sift through all of the musical acts dwelling in the dark corners of your record collection to identify those that might be most suitable for Broadwayisation. Surprisingly, some musical heavyweights can be ruled out quite quickly:

• The Rolling Stones, for example, just wouldn’t work, unless you think that people will flock to see a musical about an intrepid hero spouting off about the power of the blues for two hours, while having vaguely racist intercourse with “brown sugar” ladies. The lyrical content of their songs is just so all over the place as to be impossible to shoehorn into a coherent structure, though they certainly nail the “tonal range” criterion.
• Prince would also not work, regardless of how much my friend Roni would like to protest otherwise. For a start, all of his songs are too similar in mood to really suit the format. You want to take people through towering highs and crushing lows, whereas the journey of Prince would start, proceed and end with a mood of “pleasant funkiness”. You can’t bring people to tears while a guy molests a wah-wah pedal. The other problem with Prince is that, for a crucial period in his life, he set his own music aside and instead focused on raising the profile of the bands signed to his label. This is a problem for us as budding Broadway producers, as am fairly sure that you could be charged with war crimes for forcing a paying audience to sit through Morris Day and The Time songs[5].
• Poison. As much as I love these 80s metal legends, their career is just not suitable for stage translation. For it to accurately reflect their story, the actors would have to simulate sex 4,232 times a night – and as it has been proven by European Union physicists and Ross from Friends that you can’t take off tight leather trousers in less than 18 minutes, the show faces an insurmountable technical barrier[6].

Even after ruling out such luminaries, there are still many bands left that could be contenders for memorialisation in musical form. I’d love to hear your suggestions (other than you Roni – Morris Day is out. Really.), but here are some of mine to get the ball rolling:

• Jay-Z. One of the great musical stories, a classic meth-to-millions tale that has all the ingredients we need. There’s a built-in audience for the show among the millions of fans who revere him as the “God MC”, and his songs capture a huge range of moods and meanings. Just think of this: after a gritty early years Act soundtracked by “Blue Magic” and “Dead Presidents II”, can you imagine how good it would feel to hear “Empire State Of Mind” or “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” marking the start of the ‘we made it’ era? The only problem with this scenario is that it would be difficult to find a performer to play Jay-Z who had the charisma, charm and energy of the man himself.
• The Flaming Lips. What a show this would be, as their music is highly theatrical to start with, there’s a huge contrast between their more reflective, low-key songs (like “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots”) and the uptempo tracks, and there are semi-coherent sci-fi storylines already built into their lyrics. Again, there’s only one problem, and that is that their incendiary live shows are theatrical enough as it is, reducing the need for a stage adaptation. Plus, their giant hamster ball probably wouldn’t please the haute-coutured theatregoing crowd as it rolled over their heads.
• Limp Bizkit. Imagine this with me – a moving tale following Fred Durst as he escapes his life as a humble tattoo artist in Southern Florida, eventually becoming a multi-platinum recording artist, film director and misogynist[7]. The song titles already capture the essential elements of the arc. Fred just wants “My Generation” to “Take A Look Around”, realise that society just “Eats you Alive”, fight to learn “The Truth”, join forces and get “N 2 Gether Now”, begin a revolt and “Break Stuff”, before realising that you just want to be loved as you softly weep “Behind Blue Eyes”. Most of all, however, Fred wants you to know one thing: he did it all for the nookie. The nookie. The nookie. Such things Tony Awards are made of, people.

I’m sure you agree that all of those scenarios would be far better than sitting through a performance of Mamma Mia, but are they the best we can do? What are your ideas? Emails to the usual address, remember the rules, and above all else… no Morris Day.

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[1] Seriously, a two and a half hour musical entirely consisting of ABBA songs? I challenge anyone to say that they truly dig “Honey, Honey” or “When I Kissed The Teacher” from “More Abba Gold”

[2] Let’s face it, no-one is coming to see a musical about that one band who were signed to Equal Vision Records in 1999 that you really dug, but who got dropped before their second album

[3] For the Soulja Boy fan reading this: “Kiss Me Thru The Phone” does not count as an introspective song. Unless your show is entirely written from the perspective of the phone.

[4] Even the “simplified summary” of We Will Rock You begins by describing a key plot development thus: “The two heroes, Galileo and Scaramouche, discover musical instruments buried in rock, which they use to vaporise the head of the corporation (The Killer Queen), and send the Power Of Rock around the world to free the masses”. Perfectly logical, am sure.

[5] So as not to destroy a friendship, I have to stress that this view of Morris Day is that of the author alone, and not shared by his co-conspirators. Roni has frequently declared her love for Mr Day, his jheri curls and his “coked-up dance steps”.

[6] If technology ever advances to the point where this is not a problem, count me in. Who wouldn’t pay to go and see a Poison-themed show called “Lovin’ You’s A Dirty Job”?

[7] This footnote was originally going to include the lyrics to a particularly “interesting” Bizkit song about women, but there’s no way we could have published it. So instead, I leave you with this inspirational gem from the mind of the Durst: “may the bed bugs shrivel and die before they make it into your sheets to eat you alive”.