“Shame” (Rollins Band)

The self is a vertigo-inducing creation, inducing shame by instituting regimes of decency. This is “obscene,” even though this is a trax dedicated to finding and communicating the self. The initial problem of interpretation here is how to make sense of a confession that one embodies obscenity. The narrativization of such depravity activates the corruption with each and every telling. Not much help. But listen to the instruments, the other items of divination. At various moments, they are marginalized (panned right and left), only to be put in solitary confinement in the center. Or, as with the sustained guitar bends in the solo, they rely on the listener to make the connection between the partitions. (Don’t miss the dizziness as well, especially in the wobbly, chorus- and reverb-laden guitar figured in the verses.) The “beast . . . inside” doesn’t need to listen to this nonsense, but sociability demands un-beastly behavior. Backtrack and follow the bass: relentlessly descending, divorced from this self-introspection. We’re already low, setting the groove; no need to aspire to (the heavenly) heights.

“Walk on the Wild Side” (Lou Reed)

In memory of Lou Reed, written on 27 October 2013

The eulogies are pouring in today, and everyone is name checking Metal Machine Music (1975) and the Metallica collaboration, Lulu (2011), as evidence of Lou Reed’s enduringly perverse and antagonistic relationship with his audience. But it’s important to remember Take No Prisoners (1978), too, where his hostility is forcefully redirected at his own work, and, in particular, at his most beloved trax, “Walk on the Wild Side” (1972). Its very success is the target here, and no fan’s nostalgia will escape this act of self-trashing. The problem with the original trax is obvious. Noirish, smoky, and luded out, its call to the other is romantic and touristic through and through, as Reed strolls past the Factory’s collection of transvestites, straight and gay hustlers, drug fiends, and Norman Mailer’s “White Negroes.” (It’s a kind of companion to “Perfect Day”: let’s take an evening constitution where we will “feed animals in the zoo, and then later a movie, too.”) So, on this night at the Bottom Line in New York, Reed tells us that Nelson Algren’s original novel, Walk on the Wild Side (1956), is about a bunch of ludicrous “cripples” in the “ghetto” and written by a know-nothing Chicagoan. He claims the song was written at the prodding of some awful, off-Broadway theater producers, who later dumped him in order to produce Mahogany. “Better to be a garage mechanic,” he says, than write tripe for the Man. As for the famed quartet of wild side denizens, Reed claims he didn’t know Candy Darling very well, but she was nevertheless a dumbfuck because she got “leukemia from a silicone tit”: “And I’m supposed to feel sorry? I don’t have enough heart for 14,000 assholes.” Joe Dallesandro, another loser, has “an IQ of twelve”: “he can barely tie his shoelaces and dress.” And the less said about Joe Campbell’s pathetic love life the better. In the end, according to Reed, Andy Warhol withdrew from the Factory scene because of all these jerks and lowlifes. Who needs all this fake radicalism and posturing, this cheap imitation of the “wild”? But beyond all of this, remember: all coked up or not, “I am not trustworthy.” I am composed of “several selves,” and “Lou No. 1” is just getting around to meeting “Lou No. 5.” One Lou writes the song the whole world sings, and another smashes its pretensions. If there’s a takeaway from this scattered, broken, jumpy, and even peppy take on the song, it comes from the nihilistic Lou No. 5: “Nothing is in style, man. Haven’t you gotten into nothing yet?”

“Home, Unspeakable” (John Duncan and Bernhard Günter)

Wordless soundscape for a Samuel Beckett libretto to Morton Feldman’s Neither: a long track of extreme silences (with intermittent white noise, pops, clickings, and whirrings) punctuated after eighteen minutes by a sounds of a door unbarred, opened, shut, and refortified (three times). The idea of home for the self, or spatial origin and presence (spatial belonging), is a tempting phantasm, but unattainable. Home’s door closes upon approach. No one home, ever, but something (still) stirs: infrasonic refugees.

“Ascension Day” (Alphaville)

While others develop, seek out, or endure for a future salvation, what posture should be assumed? The other kinds of engagement build living “nightmares,” ranging from colonization to self-monitoring to sexual quietism. In these “times of terror and pain,” this trax advocates giving in to “temptations” as long (as they last) and stepping on the necks of the “meek.” With so much focus on experience(s), it’s not too much of a stretch to think this will all end badly—with a libertarian bent and superior sneer. There are no border police here, though, and you can “send in” anyone you want to protect hegemony. Being with “fools” and “whores” an antidote to the “torture and fame” of sinning, fueling a life on provisional but indefinitely renewable “dreams.”

“The Logical Song” (Supertramp)

An attempt to reclaim “simple” status in response to institutions that produce logical, intellectual, and clinical subjectivities. Desperately seeking a content as last wish: “please tell me who I am.” Acutely aware of state coercion (“watch what you say”), but this is just a cover; reclamation and self-making inherently disciplinary. Thinking the birds are “playfully watching me” is wishful: sun logic.

“Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” (Mickey Newbury)

The “hippie cowboy” strikes where it hurts. While the Kenny Rogers & The First Edition’s later version is more well known, the original’s commitment to both sitar at the beginning and tape manipulation at the end signal that the stakes are a bit different. Any altered state here is premised on a warped negligence; your “mind” should be elsewhere and soaring. Just make sure to check in once in a while: lubricate social relations, follow “sign[s],” and “unwind” as others are wont to do. Testify to the intensity of experience. Make sure that your mind is “broke[n]. And always be packing a spare “you,” since it’s the best you can do on a daily basis (given the legal limits). Be here now and then.

“Authority Song” (John Cougar Mellencamp)

Bobby Fuller Four update, “grinning” this time as the law wins yet again. The “I” self-satisfied and better than ever due to the effort of rebelling, which staves off “growing old.” “I” and “Authority” locked into repetitive game structure. Without a critique of the subject, mere happiness in slavery.

“Breakaway” (Kelly Clarkson)

Watching the Foundation for a Better Life’s commercial featuring this trax—a stitched-together series of royalty-free videos, it seems—one probably wouldn’t assume that it’s related to Philip Anshustz, notorious contributor to and advocate for causes aimed at defeating Kyoto Protocol compliance, overturning LGBT rights in Colorado, and an intelligent design think tank (the Discovery Institute). “Focused on our commonalities, not the beliefs that divide us,” the Foundation aims to “share [positive] values.” But it also tiptoes ever so gently onto the ground of Antonio Gramsci’s “good sense,” claiming that even though “people are basically good,” they need a “simple reminder.” Clarkson’s video, comes at this same point from the opposite direction, positing one’s younger self as the avatar of complete faith in the realization of emancipation. The difficulty is figuring out who the oppressors are. Willingly deaf parents ignoring the pleas of a youngster? Exurban/Suburban isolation and a temperate climate? Record company execs and rejection ad infinitum? Don’t be misled, because it’s not about being a victim. Saying “goodbye” to “make a change”—considering business propositions—is the “risk” to be taken in a world that rewards entrepreneurial moxie. Libertarian domination.

“This Perfect World” (Freedy Johnston)

Suicide, along with the “ston[ey]” countenance of abusiveness, is an enclosure, locking out all others who “might get in.” In opposition, the “perfect world” wouldn’t demand an accounting of the self or a moral pedagogy of personal responsibility—even “say[ing] goodbye” wouldn’t be necessary. Being “found,” then, involves a self-dispersal.

“He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss)” (The Crystals)

Sanger’s got nothing on this. Sandwiched between the releases of “Uptown” and “He’s a Rebel“— the transition from lionizing the common, alienated working stiff to affirming the sensitive rebel—Spector’s most unsuccessful single takes dead aim at the foundational violence of the betrothal’s gift: the landed man. Spiraling strings, especially at the song’s center, explain this problematic logic by centering on the “care” which induces the “glad” somnambulance of the “tender” self.