What It Is

 So everyone’s talking about Andy Rooney, being his Greatest Generation, 91-year-old self and talking on Sunday night about his confusion about modern pop culture, flaunting his lack of knowledge about personalities like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber.

And perhaps to the delight of his 60 Minutes audience. But honestly, Andy, you have so heard of these people. You may not know any of their songs, but you couldn’t talk about not knowing them unless you did. So there.

It just so happens that this week, neither Justin Bieber nor Lady Gaga is in the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, but Usher, also mentioned on 60 Minutes, is #1 this week. The song is called OMG and features will.i.am from the Black-Eyed Peas. I have never consciously heard this song, and may never have heard it at all. But I’m sure I hate it, and probably more virulently than Andy Rooney, even though I’m less than half as ancient as him.

You can say I’m old and I just don’t get it, but the problem is that I do get it. I got it the first time around, when Madonna created the first musical product that was based more around the personality and visual style of the singer than their voice or their songs. Madonna has made a splendid fortune selling her image, with her records as a sort of aural souvenir, a way to conjure her up before the next film or CD or book or magazine or ad campaign dose. On the way, she also (I believe) helped bring gay culture into the mainstream, warming up the populace by giving them a glimpse into her club-kid, fashiony world. Her very public, ambiguous sexuality challenged the popular notion of the unattractive lesbian who “couldn’t get a man”, mainstreaming the 90s lipstick lesbian underground scene fomenting in storefronts and basements since at least the mid 80s. But I find most of Madonna’s records almost unlistenable almost all the time.

I watched and listened to Bad Romance, and I found it derivative and poseury, full of fake masochism and pop cliches.Contrasted with, say, the banned video for Nine Inch Nails’ Happiness in Slavery.

Anyway, my point is that as the tidal wave of information sweeps over us in the post-modern age, we’ve forgotten how great the Top 40 used to be. Today, please consider this song, which peaked at #4 in both the US and the UK in April 1971:

Co-written and arranged by George Harrison, this is the kind of song that was mainstream at the time. David Bowie was still an up-and-coming underground star pre-Ziggy, Lou Reed hadn’t yet released Transformer and Iggy Pop was still in the Stooges. Other top 40 artists included James Brown, Sly & the Family Stone, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Marvin Gaye… and not one lick of that accursed autotune.

Time for a little rant to ring in the New Year:

Notice I say “New Year”  and not “New Decade”. Who ever said it was okay to count to 10 this way?

All you culture vultures, pundits and wags who are preparing to sign off on the first decade of the 21st century- not so fast! Let’s be serious about this from now on and count properly. All you party goers who are preparing for your big, decade-ending night on the town- I got sour news for you, Jack- you’re a year early!

Ask any first grader  to count to 10, and she will start at 1 and finish at 10.

No one, in fact, ever counts to 10 by starting at 0 and working their way up to 9. It’s just wrong.

Listen to the Tattooed Lady, and enjoy the last year of the decade. Decade. From the root deca. It means 10.

Maybe I’ll even make my own Top 10 of the Decade list. Next year.

But why end the year on such a curmudgeonly note?

Even though my natural inclination is to pray for the endless 80s nostalgia to be over, I have to admit it produced some very amazing works. This is one of them. Ladies and gentlemen, Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit”, live ‘84 extended version:

“Rockit” was performed in a 3-minute version at the ‘84 Grammys and turned millions of kids on to turntablism, as documented in the awesome film Scratch, one of my favorite documentaries. Anyway, a lot of people think this was the first time scratching was used in DJing and that’s not true. But “Rockit” brought mainstream cred to the turntable-as-instrument, and showed a tough, avant-garde side of Herbie Hancock. Also, the way he comes through the crowd to the stage with his keyboard, taking his time before playing the song’s signature riff… And then the solo at the end… Herbie love for the year’s end! Happy 2010, everyone!

My grrl Amanda Palmer posted this video on YouTube the other day, articulating her feelings about pop music, women and so forth.

The song is charming (posted with permission):

But I don’t happen to be down with the idea that pop music is art just because it’s self-expression. I believe that some pop music is art, but most pop music is business, and when you sell a bunch of records in a world that worships $$$, you can call yourself an artist or a monster or whatever the hell you want. I’ve seen Donald Trump quoted claiming that he’s an artist; Madonna was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, the first year she was eligible, while the Stooges are being inducted in 2009, after being turned down 7 times! 7 times!!! They’ve been eligible for 16 fuckin’ years, and one of them didn’t even live to see the day (guitarist Ron Asheton began the 2009 rock ‘n’ roll death count last January 6). Anyway,  here’s the response I emailed to her. Enjoy!
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So I went to take a look at today’s headlines when I noticed an item on the T Magazine Style Blog titled Notes from the Velvet Underground. “Oh, goody,” I said to myself. “I wonder what the style news is on the great VU.” I thought it might be a guide on where to buy great striped sailor shirts- I saw a girl looking hot in one on the street in the freezing cold last night in Soho. But I was horrified by what I read. Horrified!

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So crazily enough, just the other day I found myself trying to remember the words to “She’s Just 14“, the Rolling Stones-produced John Phillips song about his daughter Mackenzie. Readers who are paying attention will notice that the title of Mackenzie’s new book, High On Arrival, is taken from these very lyrics. And even though I’ve long thought the song was a) an excellent example of the prodigious talent of John Phillips; and b) a testament to terrible rock ‘n’ roll parenting, it only occurred to me the other day, as I struggled to remember the lyrics: John Phillips had sex with his daughter.

So imagine my stunned surprise when Mackenzie announced that exact shocker on Oprah a couple of days later.

Although the track was recorded in the mid 70s, and the alleged incestuous rape and subsequent “relationship” didn’t happen until the end of that decade, you can already hear how Phillips idealized and romanticized his little girl. It’s terrifying to think of her, surrounded by her father’s entourage, with no one to really look out for her except a man who had, it seems from his own words, concocted a dangerous and narcissistic fantasy about and around her.

While it may be true that the timing of these very public pronouncements is calculated to sell as many of Mackenzie’s books as possible, it’s very easy to imagine the impossible position Phillips put his firstborn child in.

And even moreso because Mackenzie Phillips is not the first celebrity daughter of a celebrity father to confess to this kind of situation.

Although it was never  revealed publicly during her lifetime, Anais Nin wrote about her own adult sexual relationship with her father in her journals, published as Incest after her husband’s death in 1985. Like Mackenzie Phillips, Anais Nin was the firstborn child of a charismatic, famous musician. Joaquin Nin y Castellanos was a concert pianist and composer, and quite a ladykiller, a man who slept with thousands of women. He abandoned Anais’ mother when his daughter was just a young girl, but as the eldest child, she had a more vivid and personal memory of him than her younger brothers. Her famous lifelong diary began as a letter to him in 1914.

In the unexpurgated diary, the June 23, 1933 entry describes Anais’ seduction by her father and her mixed feelings about their subsequent year-long affair, during which Anais was alternately guilty and compliant, writing about her revulsion and desire to flee, but also the tremendous feelings he aroused in her. She finally writes of being free from his spell on June 10, 1934, after she started an affair with psychoanalyst Otto Rank. She could recognize her father’s narcissism, and described to some extent the power he had over her as the critical, glamorous, remote parent for whom she needed to be perfect, beautiful and lovable.

Blood-curdling.