I don’t listen to top-forty radio, and I never see music videos, so whatever exposure I have had to current pop music has been on late-night television. The current season of Saturday Night Live has had its share of disposable “musical” guests, but it has also had some (to me) surprises – performers I had never heard of, whose music intrigued me.

The first was Bon Iver. When I saw the performance, I immediately thought, Steve Winwood lives! And that’s a compliment, since I am not used to many artists today going to the effort to make such elaborate arrangements. Multiple guitars, keyboards, horns, and a host of percussion make for a very rich sound. At a time when, it seems to me, what passes for a song is little more than an electronic drumbeat and a musical hook lifted wholly from another, superior song, I am comforted to hear something so sophisticated. Watch the clip (probably available for only a short time), and see if you can spot the Winwood.

The second performance that pleased me was by Gotye, who played a song called “Somebody I Used to Know”. Much more compelling than the typical break-up song, “Somebody I Used to Know” seems to be about guy whose ex-girlfriend has shunned him, which would not be so unusual absent his surprisingly self-aware observations, notably, “I told myself that you were right for me, but felt so lonely in your company”. Indeed, listening closely to the lyrics, I was taken by the complexity of the emotions. On one hand, the song claims that “you can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness, / Like resignation to the end, always the end”. Nevertheless, the speaker is hurt by his former lover’s coldness: “But you didn’t have to cut me off; / Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing. / And I don’t even need your love, / But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough”. Next, in a clever but lifelike twist, we hear the ex-lover’s perspective, and it contradicts his own. He is not, it seems, the innocent victim of her callousness, but the oblivious saboteur of their relationship. And in a brilliant turn, she turns his own phrasing against him: “You said that you could let it go / And I wouldn’t catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know”.

The arrangement is also compelling, particularly given the simplicty of the song itself, and so far from what I would have imagined had I written it, that I have to smile at its efficiency. Watch this video (probably only available for a short time) to see what I mean. Pay attention, too, to the visual performance, especially after the female singer appears. Both singers seem to be acting their roles, and the cameras do a good job framing the confrontation, notably by showing her in the foreground facing away from him. (Also, he looks and dresses just like my grad school adviser.)

As I have said before, 1969 seems to me to have had the most interesting summer of the twentieth century. But in 1985, 1969 probably seemed like it took place in another world. I cannot say the same for 1995. Though the same number of grains of sand have passed through the hourglass in the intervening years, 1995 feels like yesterday. Perhaps that’s why nobody is writing hit songs about it.

But I count myself luckier still because several years ago, at a concert in Orlando, I watched Bruce Springsteen pick a sign from someone in the crowd requesting the band play “Jungleland”, which they did. I got to see the Big Man play that solo and it was everything I hoped it would be.

Day Two

We took the train from White Plains into the City again on Thursday, arriving at Grand Central Terminal at noon.  Being quite hungry, we decided to explore our various dining options in the basement of the station.  There were many.  Mrs. Hill wanted to try the vast array of famous New York foods, from their famous, but inferior style pizza to their namesake cheesecake and strip steaks.  That morning she opted for a bagel.  I decided on sweet treats from Magnolia Bakery.  The display case was full of delicious looking confections, and I was uncharacteristically eager to try everything, but played it safe with a vanilla cupcake with buttercream icing.  The frosting was slightly more buttery than creamy, and there was a noticeable sugar texture, but the cupcakes were delightful nonetheless.

From Grand Central we took the No. 4 subway down to the southern tip of Manhattan, and exited at the edge of Battery Park.  This was a busy, but open and airy place, and the sunny weather made it seem quite pleasant.  It was impossible to miss the ravaged Koenig sculpture that once stood at the World Trade Center.  We made our way to Castle Clinton to purchase tickets for the ferry to Liberty Island.  Alas, no passes were available to climb to the top of the Statue of Liberty.  I suspect that those must go quickly each day.  We waited in line to board the Miss New York, and once on the ferry made our way up to the top deck.  The ride out to Liberty Island was breezy and warm, and everyone on board snapped photos the entire time.  Once docked, we walked around the Statue of Liberty, viewed the Manhattan skyline from across the harbor, and took a few photos ourselves.  Though we could not go inside the statue, I still felt content to enjoy the weather and the scenery.

We caught another ferry which took us to Ellis Island, a short distance to the north.  Exiting the boat there we walked into a large old building, where, inside the lobby was an enormous pile of suitcases.  Up a flight of stairs we entered the Registry Room, which once looked like this, but today looks like this.  An extensive museum details the experiences of the many thousands of immigrants whose first American experiences took place at Ellis Island.  These people arrived with very little.  Some of what they did have was on display, too.  The clothing–particularly the costumes from eastern Europe–was beautiful.  Overall, the museum appears designed to give you the feeling that you, too, are an immigrant arriving in America.  Of course, not everyone who came to the United States hoping to make a new life came from Europe.  Many thousands of other arrived on the west coast, or elsewhere.  But Ellis Island is a remarkable time capsule of an era in which America was, to the rest of the world, a land of opportunity where the streets were paved with gold.

The Manhattan skyline grew larger as we made our way back to Battery Park, and it occurred to me that almost nothing visible along New York Harbor today would have been around when those waves of immigrants reached Ellis Island a century ago.  New York City, perhaps more than any other large city that never saw the devastation of war, has remade itself again and again.  Draw a circle around almost any single block on a map of Manhattan and you would likely find that that block has changed appearance over and over in the course of the last hundred years.  What today is a skyscraper of glass and steel was before a more modest skyscraper of steel and stone; before that, a block of shops with apartments above; before that, a row of brick or wood houses; before that, who knows?  I thought of this more and more the next day when I stood atop the Empire State Building.

Making our way back to Midtown that afternoon, we headed to Central Park where we watched an open-air rock show.  Pavement, one of Miriam’s favorite bands had reunited for a very short time.  We stood as close as could be, on the rail directly before the stage.  I don’t know much about the band, but they seemed in good form, and everyone played Fender guitars.  Their opening act was a band called Endless Boogie.  Their name was appropriate, because their songs seemed to go on forever.  The first song consisted of only one chord (an A7), played for over twenty minutes straight.  The bass player never played a note other than A.  Their guitarists took turns jamming, with remarkably pedestrian results.  If you know anybody who plays guitar even just a little, no matter how new they are to the instrument, they could play solos as interesting as the guys from Endless Boogie.  It was unbelievably boring.  The only excitement in the entire set–which consisted of two songs totaling almost an hour of playing time–came when the singer received what appeared to be a text message or voice mail.  He reached in his pocket, took out his cell phone, then proceeded to respond to the text message.  I would like to think it was somebody in the crowd writing, “Dude, yr show blows!:-(”

After the show concluded I had to replace a contact lens that fell out during Pavement’s performance.  I had forgotten my glasses at home, and I didn’t have any replacement contacts with me, so when it fell out, I had to save it in my mouth.  I know that sounds horrible, but there isn’t much else one can do under the circumstances.  Central Park isn’t the best place to deal with that sort of problem.  But Miriam had a small mirror with her, and I got my hands clean enough with some sanitizer, and using only saliva I got that contact lens back in my eye.   Leaving Central Park we saw scores of hipsters inhaling helium from balloons being passed out by some dude who told me not to take any pictures.  New York City is much tamer than it once was.

 Also, I only heard “Felíz Navidad” once, and then it was performed by the finest group of musicians I have ever heard, Mariachi Cobre.

On another note, the biggest Christmas hit of 2010 was “Little Drummer Boy”.  It isn’t a carol I care much for, but it was simply bizarre how many times I heard it.  I asked around, and other people also noticed that “Little Drummer Boy” was everywhere this season.  Alas, nearly every version of the song I heard this year was terrible, and failed in one crucial respect: they lacked a drum.  The song’s title has the word “drum” in it; the speaker mentions that he is a drummer; the narrative hinges on the idea that he played his drum for the baby Jesus, and that that was his gift.  Forget for a moment that a drum would likely send a baby into a screaming fit.  The song makes no sense whatever if it’s not performed as a march with a prominent drum. 

This year I once again renew my call for a moratorium on new recordings of Christmas carols and songs.

I conceived of this series when I heard this song in that store.  Nothing captures the essence of summer nostalgia better than the lyric, “And every time I hear it play / I think of you and those summer days / I can still remember when I heard it on the radio”:

This song is fluffy disco, but has within it something powerful.  This contrast will soon lead me to a new series about silly songs with profound truths.  Stay tuned.

And we can be glad to learn that, somewhat atypically, the speaker’s love lasts even when summer doesn’t.

MTV connected with kids because it was on when kids wanted it.  Every afternoon after school, on weekends, all summer, MTV was there with videos, and almost everyone I know watched it every day.

MTV doesn’t exist anymore.  Sure, I understand that there is a channel called “MTV”, but it isn’t “Music Television”.  There may even be “MTV2″ or “MTV [Whatever]“, but videos don’t seem to matter to anybody anymore – at least not like they used to.  MTV cannot be blamed for that, I suppose, since cable television in those days consisted of maybe thirty channels, and, as the only station of its kind, it had a captive audience it cannot take for granted today.

Still, if you were a kid in the 1980s, and you had MTV, you almost certainly remember the video for The Cars’ “Magic”.  This is the MTV I miss.