I will be dating myself in this post, I’m sure, and I’ll also be poaching on the territory of rock ‘n’ roll expert Carl Scott over at Postmodern Conservative. But like a lot of people, I guess, I find that while my musical taste has not stood entirely still with the passage of time, I continue to be drawn to musicians whose work I loved long ago, even though many are now in their 60s. (Hey, my dad still loves the Benny Goodman music of his youth, and who can blame him?) Van Morrison, for instance, is still writing and recording, and his latest, Born to Sing: No Plan B, is surprisingly good (though “Open the Door to Your Heart” is getting way too much airplay). And the great American songwriter John Hiatt is touring on a new album, Mystic Pinball, that is one of his best in a long time. I saw Hiatt play Princeton last month, and he was in fine form.
When I was in college in the late 1970s, a second (or third or fourth?) “British invasion” hit American shores, not only with raucous acts like the Clash and the Sex Pistols, but also less self-destructive artists like Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, Nick Lowe, and Dave Edmunds. One of my favorites, who seemed like the Brits’ answer to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band for a moment or two, was Graham Parker and the Rumour. With albums like Howlin’ Wind, Heat Treatment, Stick to Me, and Squeezing Out Sparks, Parker seemed poised to launch a long-haul star career. It wasn’t to be. In the 1980s he had his biggest (but still not very big) hits, even recording a duet with Springsteen on The Up Escalator, but a lot of the fire seemed to be going out of his music at the same time.
Parker resurfaced now and then in the 1990s and 2000s with a few listenable albums, but his material got more and more spotty over time, even while he still showed real songwriting talent. One temptation to which he succumbed now and then was the angry-politics song–always a mistake for a guy who was militantly atheist and woefully ill-informed–and it usually also meant a sacrifice of musical quality when this demon possessed him. But I was usually able to shrug off these fits of ill temper if the rest of an album was passably good. Conservative rock fans have long had to cope with stupid left-wing opinions sprinkled into the songs of artists they like.
Nothing, however, quite prepared me for the assault on common decency on Three Chords Good, Parker’s new reunion album with the Rumour, the band he split with in the early 1980s. When I got to the song “Arlington’s Busy,” a silly screed about the American war in Afghanistan (a shallow effort even if one agrees with him), I shrugged, as of old. But the next song was “Coathangers,” and that did it for me. A revolting celebration of the abortion license, “Coathangers” has such timeless lyrics as this (I quote some of the less contemptible lines):
The ancients are coming by camel or limousine / to criminalize your body and call it obscene / working their way through the ranks right up / to the highest court / cos getting knocked up by your daddy that’s all your fault.
Yeah, it’s that bad–as is the refrain “come on girls, get your coathangers.”
What is particularly disheartening is that back in the late 1970s, on Squeezing Out Sparks, the song that gave the album its title (a reference to snuffing out the unborn) was “You Can’t Be Too Strong,” one of the most sensitive songs ever penned about the tragedy of abortion. Writing in the ambivalent, anguished voice of a young man whose girlfriend is aborting their baby, Parker sang:
Did they tear it out with talons of steel / and give you a shot, so that you wouldn’t feel? / and washed it away as if it wasn’t real? / It’s just a mistake I won’t have to face / Don’t give it a name, don’t give it a place / Don’t give it a chance, it’s lucky in a way . . .
November 29th, 2012 | 4:19 pm
Good grief – and I who never knew there were songs about abortion! You learn something every day…
Anyways, the lyrics quoted of “You Can’t Be Too Strong,” are extremely powerful indeed. Same powerful way to depict abortion as the “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” movie, it seemed to me.
November 29th, 2012 | 4:41 pm
A “conservative rock song” is an oxymoron…
November 29th, 2012 | 4:46 pm
There is, it seems, no small distance between remorse and contrition. One you can’t live with long, the other you can’t live forever without.
November 29th, 2012 | 5:04 pm
Sergio – say it ain’t so! I guess I’ll have to put my drums away.
Well, these rockers did get wiser with age. Some decent offerings on Reverbnation…
http://catholicmom.com/2011/08/17/catholic-music-spotlight-living-waters/
November 29th, 2012 | 5:28 pm
Of all the rock bands to surprise you with an anti-abortion song, you might be the most amazed by Slayer’s song “Silent Scream.” I have no idea what their views on the matter are now, though. Frontman Tom Araya was famously (in their circles) raised Catholic, so I wonder whether that played some role… as well as in their earlier albums’ focus on portraying evil as nightmarish and grotesque, rather than on being gratuitously blasphemous (as has become their wont).
November 29th, 2012 | 5:50 pm
“A ‘conservative rock song’ is an oxymoron…”
I don’t know. At this point rock is a fairly old genre with its own traditions or the like. Maybe “Old Time Rock and Roll” by Bob Seger was conservative in so much as it looks back to preserving or reviving old rock.
It might be easier though, considering its link to rebelliousness, for rock to be counter-revolutionary rather than conservative. People rebelling against their liberal parents by wearing hats, smoking cigarettes, criticizing no-fault divorce, and praising the Jacobites. Or something.
November 29th, 2012 | 6:46 pm
“A “conservative rock song” is an oxymoron…”
Oh, I don’t know…how about the Beach Boys “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”. Paul Anka’s “You’re Having My Baby” (horrible, and not really resoundingly pro-life what with “You didn’t have to keep it”…”You could have swept it from your life”, “I wouldn’t put you through it”, but a nice conclusion and I remember it ticked off my pro-abortion friends), Carl Carlton (?) “Everlasting Love”, etc.
November 29th, 2012 | 8:08 pm
Sergio, you’ve obviously never heard “Get Over It” or “Dirty Laundry” by Don Henley, “Red, White, and Blue” or “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, or Dylan’s “You Gotta Serve Somebody.” Stipulated conservative songs are not the norm in rock, but conservative rock song is hardly an oxymoron.
November 29th, 2012 | 9:57 pm
It’s been a long time since I’ve listened or even thought about Graham Parson, but even thinking about ‘You Can’t Be Too Strong’ is stirring. A powerful song to be sure. For those who don’t know it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVeR7VLLQc8&sns=em
I’d argue that the song’s take on abortion is pretty ambivilant, but the final verse is particularly grim:
The doctor gets nervous completing the service, he’s all rubber gloves and
no head,
Yes, he fumbles the light switch, it’s just another minor hitch, wishes to
God he was dead.
November 30th, 2012 | 7:40 am
Don’t look to mainstream rock music for anything profound or generally challenging to the status quo. That train departed a long time ago. Indeed Graham Parker has become more predictable as his career has progressed, both stylistically and lyrically. And he wasn’t even very pioneering in the 70′s, especially compared to some of his other British musical colleagues. For a much more impressive take on abortion, see the song “A Matter Of Conscience” by The Sun And The Moon (c. early 90′s), featuring Mark Burgess and John Lever of stellar British post-punk outfit The Chameleons. It’s not pop music (which is probably a good thing), but one of the last lines of the song is “For the least of all life, there is no justice”.
November 30th, 2012 | 7:46 am
And, by the way, Parker is doing an upcoming gig at Manhattan’s Ethical Culture Fieldston School on Central Park West. How much more bourgeois mainstream establishment does it get than that?
November 30th, 2012 | 8:31 am
The old rocker wore his hair too long
Wore his trouser cuffs too tight
Unfashionable to the end
Drank his ale too light
December 1st, 2012 | 9:42 pm
“A ‘conservative rock song’ is an oxymoron…”
True that. There are rare instances, but rock is adolescent music. Conservatives perpetually chase after it, just like they chase after approval from Letterman and the SNL crowd. Embarrassing.
December 4th, 2012 | 9:45 pm
Love it! Thank you many times. The only really strong reactions I get are from you blokes! Please don’t ignore my next record, I hope to be even more “contemptible.”
This is so great for business, a concept you will surely endorse at any cost!
December 4th, 2012 | 11:00 pm
Oh yeah, and how does Springsteen throwing in a few backing vocals on “Endless Night” become a “duet”?
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