Better Living Through Absurdity

This Week’s Topic: Soothing Savage Beasts

Driving around Chicago, I’ve begun to notice something…they don’t like Hank Williams III. Or rather, his music disconcerts them. Now, when I drive with Hank III, I’m happy. I have the volume up loud and I’ve got one arm languidly draped out the window with a cigarette in hand and I can’t help but smile at the audacity of his lyrics and the interplay of fiddle and banjo. But I have come to realize that in a city like Chicago, it is not expected that you’re going to hear loud hillbilly music battling your Top 40 hits or your pounding ghetto bass rhythms. It’s all well and good if you pull up next to someone who’s blaring Kelly Clarkson and you attempt to overpower her with Rhianna* or if they’ve got Marilyn Manson blasting you try to out-angst them with Pennywise or what have you. That’s all strictly aboveboard. Radio songs are like kosher goods –they aren’t questioned. You won’t find a hog anus or cockroach bits in your aural hot dog, no sir.

But you throw Hank in and suddenly all bets are off. The altar has been desecrated and the well tainted. Imagine if you will, a car pulling up in rush hour traffic. The strains of what sounds like a Negro spiritual are drifting out the window, something about Satan and how he will lead you astray. Then suddenly, an evil, demented laugh cuts through the song and in rush a banjo, guitar and fiddle to liven things up. You glance over and see a young, white female, manicured nails, nice makeup, hair done etc –and she’s tapping her fingers and smiling and singing along with lyrics like these:

“Well my worn-out boots are taking me downtown
and I'm looking for trouble and I wanna get loud.

Serve me up a drink and I'll shoot it right down
and I'll jump up on the bar and holler "One more round!"

I'm going straight to hell
Ain't nothing slowin' me down
I'm going straight to hell
so you just better get me one more round!

Well back in the day with my uncle Jed,
he kept a lot of moonshine out in the shed.
He taught me how to drink - how to be real proud
of my hillbilly ways and my outlaw style.

I'm going straight to hell
Ain't nothing slowin' me down
I'm going straight to hell
so you just better get me one more round!”

You begin to get rather nervous. What are these strange instruments? Where’s the synth or the poppy drum beat or the re-mastered beats from 1970? Where are the empowered female vocals or the soulful sensitive man-wimp croonings? Hell, where’s the bass fueled screaming thrash metal or even the accordion-driven Mexican music that so many favor? What the hell is this hillbilly shit?

Then a new song starts –this one with lyrics that openly discuss taking drugs and being so high you have no idea what’s going on. There’s no metaphor here. Nothing is covered up with symbolism. There’s no misdirection. Plain and simple –this is a guy who likes to get stoned, drunk and wasted. While driving a truck down a muddy dirt road.

“Well, I've been awake for eight days straight:
Well, it must've been them pills I took.
I been twitchin' an' turnin' an' seein' visions:
It must've been them pills I took.

Well, I don't know what they were an' I don't know where I got 'em,
But they sure did make me feel good.
They kept my heart from feelin' blue,
An' kept my thoughts away from you.

Well, there's blood on the carpet an' holes in the walls:
Well, it must've been them pills I took.
Yeah, the mirrors are all busted an' someone's cryin':
It must've been them pills I took.”

I love it. No, screw that. I FUCKING love it. What can I say?! It just puts a big ol’ grin on this city gal’s face. Sure, I don’t have the freckles or the hat, I don’t have the daisy dukes or the checked shirt. I don’t have the drug or alcohol addiction and I’ve never had the inclination to screw anybody’s wife before od’ing on cocaine –but that doesn’t mean I don’t FEEL it. That doesn’t mean I don’t have the desire to throw caution to the wind and get in a bar fight, go home with a stranger, have sex, get high, go driving to another bar outside of town only to get kicked out after start another fight and going home with another stranger. I want it too Hank –I really do! I want to be that gal who’s 5’10 that you want to take down a road of sin –pick me pick me!!! I want to sit and drown my sorrows with the likes of David Allen Coe, Johnny Cash, George Jones, Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings. I want to do some finger-pickin’ and washboardin’ and hog tyin’ and and and and…

Well you get the point.

I learned a long time ago that folks are darned uncomfortable with music that doesn’t seem to fit –and so as a result, I take a great deal of pleasure in forcing them to be exposed to it. For example, when I used to go through the Grapevine pass in CA, and traffic would get slow and you’d just be there, on a hill, surrounded by other hills, other cars, it’s usually hot and you start to get cranky. So I get out my tape of Swiss Yodeling music –and proceed to play it very loudly. Because of the hills, the music kind of echoes around you –and much to my great joy and amusement, I can see people sticking their heads out of the windows, looking upwards, staring at each other in complete befuddlement, looking at the car next to them to see if perhaps it has been commandeered by a troupe of dirndl and lederhosen-wearing freaks who are just so damned happy to be stuck on the Grapevine that they’re gonna sing about it. When one is in a very ultra-hip neighborhood like a couple we have here in Chicago, blasting Paul Robeson or Harry Belafonte tends to make the skinny-jeans wearing, faux-hawked sporting, tattooed, pierced and complete with ringer-tee that has an Atari logo on it populace, hang back further in the shadowed doorways, smoking their cloves and imitation Gauloises and muttering about Foucault or Derrida or what’s on sale at UO (that’s Urban Outfitters for the rest of you cretins) or talking about what band is going to be playing at the Empty Bottle or Double Door. If you drive down a really wealthy neighborhood or through the Loop and you’re playing opera –well, it isn’t the music they have a problem with so much as it is WHO is playing it –and if indeed, you aren’t doing the music some sort of disservice by playing it in your Oldsmobile rather than a Bentley or Aston-Martin or the good old family Rolls.

Bottom line –I play what I damn well please. Maybe I’m not a alcoholic outlaw, maybe I don’t want to smoke morphine, maybe I’m not on the lam with a gun –but dammit, I’m a rebel too –just like Hank.

Now, where the hell is my homemade tattoo gun, crack pipe and copy of Jugs?

*I had to look up some of the latest names in top 40 hits -sorry if these are dated -I'm not really up on the hippest and hottest.