What a Fool Believes

Loverboy: “Working For The Weekend”

You’re a kid—probably middle school as that’s when you’d start having such thoughts—in the back of your parents’ sky-blue 1984 Honda Civic hatchback and it’s Friday and you and the family are heading somewhere, anywhere, it doesn’t matter, while Loverboy’s on the radio singing, “Everybody’s working for the weekend,” and you’re like this is a great song, but fucking kill me when I’m older if I’m working for the weekend ‘cause every day should be like the weekend and when I’m older and out of school that’s how I’m gonna live. And then years pass and decisions are made/unmade and you, in your thirties now, come home from work and immediately have to do the dishes so that you have a clean pot to make dinner with and your better half asks, “How was your day?” and you answer, “It was a day. It was not good or bad. It merely existed and now it’s gone never to return,” or, your better half asks, “Is it Friday yet?” and you reply, “I wish,” and, no matter the version, you remember what your middle-school-self said and it makes you feel terrible as you scrub out the colander, so you sing to yourself, “Turn me loose, turn me loose, I gotta do it my way, or no way at all,” and then think about quitting your job and just fucking doing what you want, man, living how you wanna live, but, really, you know you’re living how you have to live and it sucks sometimes but it must be done—plus, it could be much, much worse—and, besides, why do you care what your middle-school-self thinks anymore? Your middle-school-self owned and operated a Green Day Dookie t-shirt. Your middle-school-self should be thrilled that you’re living in the city writing stories. “Writing stories? With an MFA and a bunch of connections, right?” Your middle-school-self asks, still wearing that goddamn Dookie t-shirt, and you reply, “Well, no, our college-self was a mopey loner who stopped going to class sophomore year never to return, leading us through a series of jobs until we got it together like five years ago to start writing. So we have to work all week and write all night, kinda writing for the weekend, you know?” and your middle-school-self says, “Oh,” and looks kind of sad, the mope to come starting to show on its baby-face, until it looks up, expression changing, to add, “Loverboy had mullets. What do they know?” and you’re like, “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right,” and you smile at one another before you say, “Now go change your shirt.”

The Doobie Brothers: “What a Fool Believes”

“What a Fool Believes” Explained:

He came from somewhere back in her long ago

The “He” in the song refers to its co-writer Kenny Loggins. The “her” was a woman Loggins went to high school with named Debi Lafontaine. He’d been sweatin’ her since freshman year. Debi had just moved to Los Angeles, in 1978, where and when the song was written.

The sentimental fool don’t see

Loggins and the song’s other scribe, Michael McDonald, worked on this song Lennon/McCartney-style trading lines. (Their initials matched plus they were both really into symbols—70’s L.A.—so it was fate. This line was McDonald’s, one where he was gently mocking his friend for sweatin’ this girl so hard.

Tryin’ hard to recreate / What had yet to be created once in her life

When Doobie Brothers guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter heard this line he uttered, “Ooh.” Loggins thanked Skunk and Skunk looked around at the rhythm section with his classic this-guy-doesn’t-get-my-world-class-sarcasm look, which consisted of nothing but a raising of his right eyebrow.

She musters a smile for his nostalgic tale

Debi Lafontaine wasn’t much for nostalgia but Loggins was cute.

Never coming near what he wanted to say

Michael McDonald had a secret fear of words. He thought that uttering certain words would magically bring them to life (70’s L.A.), though, not as the object themselves, but as anthropomorphic letters. Because of this fear, McDonald wouldn’t say the word “muffin” for nearly 15 years.

Only to realize / It never really was

No one was really sure if Debi Lafontaine was real. Loggins constantly made up stories. Skunk joked to the rhythm section that he had “Logginsorrhea.” This line was a potential hint to the truth of Lafontaine.

She had a place in his life

It was in a hammock where Loggins would feed her red grapes and Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers.

He never made her think twice

Debi Lafontaine was a “first thought, best thought” kind of woman. She went with her gut, you know? Loggins found that incredibly sexy.

As he rises to her apology / Anybody else would surely know / He’s watching her go

Love can cloud the mind, Michael McDonald thought. But he didn’t dare speak it. “Cloud” was a particularly nasty word overflowing with dark magic.

But what a fool believes he sees

“Cognition 101,” Skunk said to the rhythm section.

No wise man has the power to reason away

Before becoming a singer/songwriter, Kenny Loggins was in school to become a wise man. At that time (late 60’s), you could become a wise man with a two-year degree from a technical college. Loggins dropped out believing that no man who was truly wise would ever spend his life reasoning away. Plus, there was a woman he was sweatin’ and a wise man is sworn to celibacy. 

What seems to be / Is always better than nothing

Even Skunk had to give it up for this line.

And nothing at all keeps sending him

Loggins and McDonald, during the songwriting process, would often play croquet. McDonald was notorious for “sending”—striking the balls of opponents into the rough away from the hoops. McDonald would send somebody with little to no provocation, just for the sadistic glee he took in it.

Somewhere back in her long ago / Where he can still believe there’s a place in her life / Someday, somewhere, she will return

Debi Lafontaine turned out to be real. Loggins brought her in to the studio to meet the Doobies. While Loggins and McDonald were writing, Skunk snuck off with Debi. Debi had thought Loggins cute but in a boyish, little brother sort of way. Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, with his rich handlebar mustache and strong hands, was a man. When Loggins found out he was devastated. Then he went and wrote the Caddyshack theme song and we all know how he was feeling on that one.

[Repeat pre-chorus. Ride chorus out.]

Rage Against The Machine: “Bulls on Parade”

I listened to Rage Against The Machine in high school. The first time I saw the “Bulls on Parade” video was at my friend’s house. His parents were about to drive us to a state forest for a biking trip. My two friends had $500 Cannondales with RockShox. I was borrowing my dad’s $75 Schwinn. I tried to read every book pictured in the Evil Empire liner notes. I really wanted The Anarchist Cookbook. My friends and I once filled a tennis ball with strike-anywhere match heads and threw it at the side of a Walmart. It didn’t explode. I doodled “FREE MUMIA” on my paper bag book covers. I wrote a paper about Che Guevara in an English class. I turned it in while wearing my Evil Empire t-shirt. I also sometimes wore a Hooters t-shirt and it was half-ironic at best. My mom sewed a patch of a Che-face-filled-South America onto my backpack. I bought the patch at the mall. I was so disgusted by the clearly conspiratorial American government that I proclaimed overthrowing it and starting from scratch was the only remaining option. My friends and I were disappointed we didn’t get to see the RATM/Wu-Tang Clan tour in ‘97. We blasted their albums in my friend’s ‘89 Pontiac Grand Am all that day. During college I became “disillusioned” with politics. “Disillusioned” meaning “bored, too self-involved.” I stopped listening to Rage Against The Machine.

I get my politics from silver foxes and comedians these days. I still listen to Wu-Tang.

Bruce Springsteen: “Brilliant Disguise”

OH MY GOD BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN IS STARING DIRECTLY INTO MY SOUL RIGHT NOW AND I DON’T THINK IT CAN HANDLE IT. LIKE IS MY SOUL ME OR IS IT BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN OR IS IT BOTH OF US OR IS IT ALL OF US? OH MY GOD BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN ARE WE IN A SPACE WHERE THESE QUESTIONS AND THEIR ANSWERS EVEN MATTER ANYMORE?
YES WE ARE.

Wire: “Pink Flag (The Black Session: Paris, 10 May 2011)”

–Do you think the guys in Wire listen to other music?

–They have to, right?

–I don’t know. I don’t think they do.

–They probably said at some point that they listened to certain bands and loved them and were even influenced by them.

–I don’t think I’d believe it. I mean, sure, they heard other music, and even liked some of it, but not for long. I think that the guys in Wire are the musical equivalent of misanthropes.

–They might also be misanthropes.

–True. But their musical misanthropy is not the misanthropy where you just straight-up hate people. It’s the kind where you love people but are deeply disappointed in them because they could be so much more.

–Do they only like their own music then?

–Well, for a little while. Look how fast they churn through their material. It’s like Mark E. Smith and The Fall. If you don’t catch a song on the tour for that album, they’ll most likely be too sick of it to ever play again.

–Except for “Pink Flag”.

–Yes.

–Because they always play that one.

–What else can you listen to after that?

Beck Reimagines David Bowie’s “Sound and Vision”

Like his phenomenal Philip Glass remix, “NYC: 73-78”, Beck has reworked David Bowie’s “Sound and Vision”—with a 160-piece ensemble featuring his dad on conductor detail—into something awesome and epic. It’s a whole big multi-media experience put together by, not the Ghost of Abraham Lincoln, sadly, but the car company Lincoln. (Though I think the Ghost of Abraham Lincoln would approve—probably with a doff of his top hat and a funky two-step with those gangly and honest limbs of his.)

Whether or not you check out the 360-degree camera business to come, you should definitely experience the piece with headphones. The intro is a pan extravaganza, voices and strings and drums and horns popping up around your listening field like Whac-A-Moles.

The song proper is just as vibrant and detailed a composition as you would expect from 160 musicians. There are melodies swapping instruments for voices and back again flawlessly. Everything is in its place but not constrained. It’s a structure so sound that even whistling and yodeling parts have their room. The song ends with a coda—whose drums nod to “Modern Love”—that shifts gracefully from pensive to menacing to anthemic.

Beck’s been busy the past few years in an interesting way. He may not have made a proper album since 2008’s Modern Guilt—and been iffy album-wise since 2002’s Sea Change—but he maintains his creativity. He produced albums for Thurston Moore and Stephen Malkmus, did an excellent cover of “I Only Have Eyes for You” for artist Doug Aitken’s “Song 1” project, did more covers—of entire albums—with his Record Club group, and released the lush book of sheet music, Song Reader. There is something to admire in this.

Now I don’t know that Beck was stuck creatively—in interviews he’s mentioned sitting on songs for his next album since 2008—but there’s a lesson regardless: Fuck around with other projects and/or mediums. Bat for Lashes—who Beck worked with on the spooky “Let’s Get Lost”—mentioned something similar in Pitchfork, re: The Haunted Man, where she called up Thom Yorke for writer’s block advice and he told her to draw. If stuck, you don’t have to sit around and wait for what’s next or get twisted up with what you’re on. Draw or write a story in another genre or do a wild cover of a song. Especially if you have a 160-piece ensemble and David Bowie’s approval handy.

Valentine