I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got

In music, the Liberal Street Fighters enjoy themselves

I had a good day on Saturday.

It was a beautiful fall day, and I’d had my fill of “Fitzmas”, of disappointment, of the howling void that is political discourse in this country right now. I’d had enough of blogging; reading and writing. I knew, like the sun rises and the moon sets, that the Bush Administration would nominate some troglodyte to the bench on Monday, and I knew that the poodle press would follow the new bright shiny ball, press releases fluttering out ahead of their cold-to-the-touch noses like that mechanical rabbit at a Greyhound track.

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I ventured out to spend a bright sunny fall day wandering around Milwaukee after getting some long-neglected chores out of the way.

Oh, by the way, this is a record review, but bear with me, because it will take me a little while to get to it, but the music I picked up that day at Exclusive Company near Brady Street was chosen because of the day I had, and the way the world is going. Indulge me while I meander a bit.

After breakfast at a little Greek place near my house, I picked up a bus pass for the next work week and swung down to the Borders downtown, just to browse and pick up the latest No Depression. From there, I caught a bus up to the Brady Street area and got out near Collector’s Edge, a comic store that opened a branch recently in that neighborhood, and I had a wonderful conversation with the manager of the store.

I quit collecting comics back in the mid-eighties, as the companies producing them were swept up in the profits uber alles Reagan era. It had gotten to the point where you had to buy dozens of books to follow plot lines, while prices rose and rose on thinner and thinner books. Some great artwork was being produced, some wonderful stories since turned into often crappy movies, but I just gave up on the whole thing.

I’d been collecting since I was very young until I stopped in my twenties. I remember the socially conscious books that came out in the early 70s. I guess I’ve been feeling nostalgic for a time when people seemed to give a damn about inequality and were willing to fight it, a time when music and art and protests were opposing a criminal war. I know those things are happening now, but it seems so muted by the cotton candy fluff of 21st Century consumer culture. Protest too, like rock and roll and hip hop and everything else, is just another commodity.

Anyway, she and I talked about what comic books were out now (how sad that I’m old enough that a woman knowing so much about comics felt like a novelty … how cool that she did). She gave me some recommendations, showed me some artists I might enjoy. She had wonderful taste, and showed me some of the reissues of books that I’d enjoyed decades ago, all gathered together in graphic novels with commentary by their creators. How funny to see art originally produced to be printed on cheap newsprint all bright and garish on slick shiny paper. Wrong somehow, like an old pair of jeans starched and pressed. Still very cool to see it again, how fresh the memories it evoked.

I left with another volume of Alan Moore’s Promethea and a couple of issues of Gotham Central that she had recommended, a wonderful take on Batman from the point-of-view of cops on the streets of Gotham, cops forced to do their jobs in a corrupt city which also happens to host super-powered villains and the Dark Knight.

 Down the street, after browsing through some used X-Box games and used CDs at another store, I sat in Starbucks to drink a coffee and read No Depression, cloistered off in the corner where I couldn’t be jostled and I could take my time. Outside, on the corner, local activists, mostly older, protested the Iraq War, carrying signs and dressed in Halloween Costumes. They were pretty low-key and friendly about it, and most people seemed to react well to them. I stayed away, having promised myself a break from politics for a while.

I finally wandered into the music store, browsing through the used cds. It was busy, and as usual I didn’t recognize many of the discs on the “chart” wall, much of it hip hop. For someone who sold music for many years, this has been an adjustment, suddenly removed from the faster currents of pop culture that I used to swim in. I considered several discs I’d read about in the reviews of my new magazine, trying to match them up with songs I’d heard on Cafe Tonight on WUWM. After considering some Buddy Miller, some Billy Joe Shaver and even Lamb of God, I decided to give the new disc by Bettye LaVett a try.

Yes, this is yet another “comeback” disc by an underappreciated singer who’s career started in Detroit back in the early sixties. She had hits back in the heyday of R&B, releasing a string of singles back when the single was king. She had some hits in the disco era, but only ONE album in the early ’80s … Ms. LaVette is one of those singers that musicians and aficionados treasure, but far from a household name.

I sliced the plastic wrap open and slipped it into my discman, getting on the bus for the ride home. The track listing (with songwriters/original perfomers):

I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got – Sinead O’Connor

Joy – Lucinda Williams

Down To Zero – Joan Armatrading

The High Road – Sharon Robinson

On The Surface – Rosanne Cash/Jimmy Tittle

Just Say So – Cathy Majeski/John Scott Sherrill, originally performed by Bobbie Cryner

Little Sparrow – Dolly Parton

How Am I Different – Jon Brion/Aimee Mann

Only Time Will Tell Me – Toni Brown

Sleep To Dream – Fiona Apple

I got off the bus and sat under a beautiful blue sky on a park bench in Juneau Park, up on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. Produced by the brilliant Joe Henry, the songs rolled across my ears, and I was pleased that my purchase had been wise, finding once again that No Depression hadn’t let me down. Her cover of Sinead is stark, a capella, raw and beautiful and she makes it utterly hers. This is one thing that has been lost in this age of “tribute” albums, with most “cover” versions of songs produced as slavish recreations of the original (see Limp Biscuit’s cover of Behind Blue Eyes, and no, I WON’T link to that piece of shit). Great songs can be revealed when filtered through the experiences of a great interpreter. This song certainly was. When Sinead recorded it, she was callow, and there was a youthful innocence in the original, but when filtered through a lifetime of experiences, from a different perspective, a sense of perseverance is revealed in the words.

I sat there, watching the clouds float by and traffic cruise past and sailboats drift along, one song after another. Joy becomes a romp, a vamp, a challenge to anybody who would dare to get in this woman’s way. The next three tracks broaden songs that I already love, and then Just Say So comes along, just her voice and a lone accoustic guitar, played by Chris Bruce, catches me short. It’s border-line cold out, but the sun has been bright and strong, only now it has slid behind the new ugly condo tower “gracing” the lakefront in Milwaukee, the cold glass and graceless formed concrete matching the chill wind suddenly echoed by the shadow and the bracing wind blowing out of the northwest.

An aching song of loss, the plaintive cry of a woman reaching out to a lover suddenly distant, even though they share a bed. It’s heartbreaking, and I find cold tears running down my cheek. It’s cathartic, needed, all of the stress and anger leavened by this raw exposition of loneliness and need.

I sit there a little shaken, maybe embarrassed, but this is what great music does. It strips you raw, sometimes when you least expect it. It was a catharsis I needed, and I’m so blessed that I took a chance on this disc. The last four cuts are equally worthy, and give shading to words and music I know well. I walk home, feeling washed a little clean, a little revived.

Great music is about defying boundaries, despite the music business’ relentless drive to brand everything, to create and harden genres, to divide us all into easy-to-market demographics. I love this disc (you can hear some of it for yourself here).

Saturday was a good day, and this is a great disc. Check it out for yourself.