"Optimistic"
"Optimistic"
Practicing clean livin'? Considering compromise? Then hey—yah mo b there!
I know, I know, depending on what coast you’re on you’re probably either just squeezing in one last drink and app at Happy Hour, or just sitting down to Happy Hour. But that’s when I wanted to send my first post in months—when you’re happy! And won’t get too mad at me for not sending a post in months!
It’s rough out there.
It’s hard to know what’s most useful to write about anymore. And it’s hard to feel optimistic. Most of those supposedly in-the-know seem to think Donald Trump has a better-than-average shot at winning back the White House. Three days after my last post on October 4, Hamas staged their attack on Israel. And I keep getting notices for job openings that say, “Teach our artificial intelligence software to better understand English!” (So that human writing and editing will become obsolete, I presume…)
So I dunno if you’re anything like me, but I’m not sure what to do with this Substack anymore, or how to feel about the state of the world, or what to believe our futures might look like.
Too heavy? Yeah, too heavy—for a Friday, especially! Sorry…
OK, going for more optimism, here. (I can’t promise an optimistic piece, but “more” optimism than normal I can commit to.) I’m gonna implement my half-baked plan to prepare a nice shit sandwich of music and current events for you like I was musing over in my last post. A little music commentary at the beginning and end, with some current events commentary in the middle.
THE TOP PIECE: Moneybags Melvin
This is but the top cassette case in my cassette tower of four total cassette cases. My dad and I built this tower, and a CD tower, when I was in college, in the living room of my first rental house after moving out.
Building such a structure was one of Dad’s and my greatest achievements in handiwork. Which is to say, we were never the handiest of handymen. But every once in awhile Dad would surprise himself and install something elaborate. Or, one time (not in band camp), I took apart a broken washing machine and was able to put it back together again. (No I didn’t fix it or find what was wrong but the point is I totally disassembled and totally reassembled a washing machine. Right? Whatever.)
Now, of course, I was not old enough to have purchased most of these cassettes. I barely even know what cassettes are, tbh. These are all my much older cousin Melvin’s, and were handed down to me after Melvin perished in a mysterious yachting accident off the coast of Monaco.
If I’m being honest, I’m fairly pissed all I got were Melvin’s cassette and CD collection, seeing as he went yachting in Monaco on the reg. But nonetheless, I shall always cherish his mentoring me on all things classic rock and ‘80s metal. He told me his grandiose stories of growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s absolutely consumed by music and MTV so precisely and passionately, in fact, that it almost feels like I was there myself (when, as mentioned, I am far far far too young to have taken part in the ‘80s and ‘90s music scene).
Therefore, since Melvin was such a killer storyteller, I am going to go ahead and talk about these cassettes in the first person, as if it were me (preposterous!) who grew up with this music. It’s the least I can do for my dearly departed cousin Melvin (who should’ve at least given me his Honolulu blue 1970 Pontiac Firebird. At least!).
“Walk This Way”
Anyway! The cassettes are arranged by color, from darkest at the top down to lightest at the bottom of the tower. Otherwise there’s no rhyme or reason to the slot in which they were placed. That said we start at the top-left slot with Aerosmith’s Permanent Vacation.
“I” (me actually being Melvin, of course) might not have purchased the Boston bad boys’ big comeback album if not for their collaboration with Run D.M.C. on the remake of their ‘70s hit “Walk This Way.” But it was so exciting the way the video started off, with these two vastly different bands in green rooms separated by a flimsy wall, and the old fogies Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith (who were 38 and 36, respectively) getting so offended by the rap music leaking through the wall that Tyler smashes a microphone stand base through the wall to stop the ruckus.
I’m writing this all from memory, let’s see how close I got:
Pretty close. Anyways. Mayyyyyybe I’d heard some rap by the time this video came out? But this was the first time a (painfully) white kid from Northwest Ohio farm country ever truly paid attention to a rap group—just like all the other (painfully) white kids in the hinterlands who MTV execs wisely targeted before focusing on big-city kids. We were the most impressionable, I suppose.
But at the time I didn’t like Aerosmith. I knew nothing of the original “Walk This Way,” or the massive ballad “Dream On,” or anything else they’d released—other than the album previous to Permanent Vacation, Done With Mirrors. Which, other than the coolness factor of having to look at the cover in a mirror to read, was a bust for my (i.e. Melvin’s) young ears.
Except for the single, “Let the Music Do the Talking,” I thought the record was boring. No life to it. I’d later find out that it had only gone halfway toward bringing back the magic of the band’s ‘70s heyday. Reunite the so-called “Toxic Twins” in bringing back guitarist Perry to once again team with vocalist Tyler? Check. Excise the “toxic” from the Twins’ agenda? No check.
It wasn’t until Aerosmith made the very public decision to get clean—as a band—that they were able to wrap their unclouded heads around listening to label guru John Kalodner and revamping their sound to be more pop-oriented. And the rest is Aerosmithstory (I came up with that word! Just now!).
Totally dug every song on Permanent Vacation. Album opener “Heart’s Done Time” announced the band was truly back and hearkened back to their ‘70s glory days. But then “Rag Doll” was way different…way catchier and poppier. And “Angel” is a powerful and unjustly forgotten entry in the annals of the ‘80s power ballad—and probably the harbinger of the “Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” version of Aerosmith we had in store. And then of course there was the first proper single of Aerosmith’s second coming, “Dude (Looks Like a Lady).”
Which kinda had the same premise as Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing”—it was taking the piss out of the glam metal scene that had taken over MTV by 1987. And yet it was a glam metal scene Aerosmith were only too happy to assimilate themselves into, like ‘70s brethren Kiss, Whitesnake, Judas Priest, and Twisted Sister were also doing with great success at the time.
I think the vaunted/infamous John Kalodner helped Aerosmith reinvent themselves just so he could insert himself into the video for “Dude” and provide us one of the iconic images of the hair metal scene:
THE FILLING: Finally, some bipartisan—but inevitably sabotaged—movement in D.C.
Did you hear about the left and the right working together in Washington this last week?
That’s the story that jumped out at me most in current events, that they actually came upon the precipice of a compromise that would limit immigration, which the right wants; and send more much-needed aid to Ukraine to continue holding off Russia’s invasion, which the left wants. (Well, many on the right still want to help Ukraine, too, but not enough to cross the shitkickers in their party who aren’t interested in maintaining a democracy in America, let alone democracy in some Eurasian country 5,000 miles away.)
I don’t know all the details, but the New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast talks about where things stand in yesterday’s episode, see below. But it sure sounds like two objectives both sides either really like, or at least don’t really hate, have been sabotaged at the very strong, very powerful suggestion of Donald Trump.
Trump thinks he’s going to win back the presidency on immigration remaining a crisis. And, it is bad down there. But apparently not really as bad Republicans in Washington have been insisting?
The GOP plan appears to be ramming into folks’ minds the thought of [paraphrasing] “strong young males who are bad hombres coming from shithole countries in droves to cross our Swiss-cheese border.” The play is that this is going to so frighten people that the right will eek out some big wins in the coming election. So instead of following through with what Republicans in Congress themselves demanded—no new aid to Ukraine until the border is addressed—Trump now may have persuaded enough Republicans to vote against the bill and keep immigration a crisis until November.
I may be getting some of the details wrong, so here’s “The Daily” episode that has the full story:
And two more bipartisan initiatives?!!
I’m running too long, here (as usual, just like the good ol’ days), but YES:
Both parties ganged up on the heads of the world’s biggest social media platforms this week. It may have only achieved a personal face-to-face apology from Mark Zuckerberg to the families of kids who have been abused or died due to mistreatment via Facebook and Instagram, but still. A pretty even contingent of Democrats and Republicans leading the charge in a hearing against evil corporations is…something.
AND: A bill that might actually pass is receiving bipartisan support, too. The good news: it’ll help poor kids. The bad news: as former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explains in an article on his Substack, it “restores a set of business tax breaks that will benefit the richest 1 percent of Americans quite a lot, and the richest 0.1 percent even more.”
What’s your take? Would you pass a bill that would provide relief for some while supercharging inequality even more?
THE BOTTOM PIECE: Pick a number, any number…
OK I’ll make this last one quick(er). I have a Spotify playlist called “Recollection Records: Music That’s Entered My Head Out of Nowhere.” So it can’t be something I consciously know I heard on an ad or a TV show or film. It’s something that came outta nowhere, and thus is clearly buried deep in my psyche, from past repeated listens. (Repeated listens encouraged by ol’ Cousin Melvin, no doubt.)
And therefore…lots of hair metal, lots of classic rock, lots of ‘70s, ‘80s, and some ‘90s pop. And lots of other stuff too, cuz there are 965 songs on this playlist, and counting.
So I’m gonna have Perplexity.ai (Lord help us) pick a random number from 1 to 965, I’ll talk about what I first think of when it comes to that song—probably where I was when I first got into the tune—and then we’ll be done here. And you can go back to enjoying your Friday. Or Saturday, or Sunday, if you’re reading this then.
And Perplexity’s pick izzzzzzzz… 512.
Oh geez. I mean, I don’t know where I first heard “It Keeps You Runnin’.” Let’s see, it was released in…yeah 1978. So, even before Melvin’s time!
But I can say that I enjoy Michael McDonald Doobies as much as, if not more than pre-Michael McDonald Doobies. The only other tidbit I can offer is that the Doobie Brothers were the second-billed band on the Lynyrd Skynyrd music cruise I played on with Truth & Salvage Co. some years ago. So I remember hanging briefly with a couple Doobies members who were definitely not Michael McDonald.
And I love this Michael McDonald-as-premier-backing-vocalist skit from Rick Moranis on SCTV:
Happy Friday, music (and current events) fans!
Yours,
~Dean
P.S. In the spirit of the modern-day media industry, I have not proofed the above, ‘cuz I just wanted to get it out there so it could get some traction and I could move on to the next thing. Maybe I’ll get to reviewing it if I get any spare time. “Perfection is the enemy of the good,” after all. 🤢
P.P.S. And I’m sure there are typos because this bluetooth keyboard’s period key keeps sticking and weird punctuation keeps happening. So that’s why that weird punctuation happened. If it happened. If it didn’t, this P.P.S. will self-destruct in exactly 10 seconds. Have a nice weekend!