Keith Richards' Race Thing

Over the years I've had people question the degree to which I focus on race, or the ways in which I focus on race, in my approach to the study of rock music. Some students who take my rock history class - not all, or a majority, but definitely some - have complained in their evaluations about how much time we spend in class talking about race. I start my rock history course with lectures on blues, bluegrass, and blackface minstrelsy, and make it clear that from my perspective, rock 'n' roll is born not just from the intermingling of white and black musical styles, but from white fascination with blackness as that thing which is culturally marked as alluring and forbidden in roughly equal measure.

My book on the history of the electric guitar, Instruments of Desire, is steeped in similar arguments, and when it came out, some reviewers took me to task in the way that some of my students have done, wondering why the story of race and rock should be made to sound ridden with conflict rather than conciliation, as though music could only erase difference rather than reinforce it. I've always found such perspectives frustrating, as have many other scholars who study race. They arise out of the belief that color blindness is the best way forward, a belief that chooses to circumvent the continuing power of race rather than recognize it more directly and address it head on.



I'm now in the midst of reading Keith Richards' new autobiography, Life, and these issues have arisen anew for me. It's a great read - Richards is a good storyteller, his voice captured well by co-writer James Fox; and there are loads of revealing anecdotes that say as much about the larger context in which rock music took root in the UK in the late '50s/early '60s as they say about the specific history of Richards and the Stones.

The book opens with a rousing tale of a near drug bust in the mid '70s when the Stones were touring through the Southern U.S. In the middle of the account, though, Richards falls into flashback mode, recalling the dangers of traveling through the South in the mid 1960s as a group of long-haired Englishmen, disdained by the locals and only finding comfort on the other side of the tracks. By Richards' account, while white Southerners were bent on calling him and his band mates "girls" for their unseemly long hair, black Southerners were far more open minded. "You got welcomed, you got fed and you got laid. The white side of town was dead, but it was rockin' across the tracks. Long as you knew cats, you was cool." (p. 8)

All of which is mere prelude to a more extended riff by Richards concerning the wonders of a Mississippi juke joint for a group of white, blues-worshiping Brits. Richards' words here are worth quoting at length:

"And there'd be a band, a trio playing, big black fuckers and some bitches dancing around with dollar bills in their thongs. And then you'd walk in and for a moment there's almost a chill, because you're the first white people they've seen in there, and they know that the energy's too great for a few white blokes to really make much difference ... But then we got to get back on the road. Oh shit, I could've stayed here for days. You've got to pull out again, lovely black ladies squeezing you between their huge tits ... I think some of us had died and gone to heaven, because a year before we were plugging London clubs, and we're doing all right, but actually in the next year, we're somewhere we thought we'd never be. We were in Mississippi." (p. 9)

I've edited this passage a bit but the long version is every bit as suggestive. It's remarkable, first of all, that here in 2010 such unabashed racial exoticism is still every bit as potent as it was back in 1965 when Richards is writing about, or 40 years before that, and so on. It's also so telling that this comes within the opening pages of Richards' autobiography. These reflections are clearly meant to lay the foundation for all that is to come, for the deep immersion in the blues that Richards and his cohort experienced, for the intensive effort to reproduce the sounds they heard on records by Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Chuck Berry and a host of others. Richards' impressions of black Mississippi don't invalidate anything that he's accomplished - indeed I'm sure in the eyes of many readers they precisely authenticate his dedication to the real, the true, the Southern blues life blood that birthed rock and roll.

In my reading, what these passages reveal is how much racial reality and racial fantasy are inextricable in the realm of rock, or popular culture more generally. I wouldn't necessarily call Richards' impressions racist, but I would observe - and more strongly, I'd assert - that his perceptions are steeped not in the "real" stuff of Southern blackness but in Richards' own search for something outside of himself with which he could identify so as to reinforce his own standing as outlaw, rebel, outsider. White men have been turning to their imagined notions of blackness for two centuries or more to fulfill similar desires, with results that have been mixed in more ways than one.

Right wing folk-rock

I'm teaching a course on suburbia this semester called "In the Burbs: Culture, Politics, Identity," and we're currently covering the role of the suburbs in the rise of the New Right during the 1960s and 1970s. Scanning the internet for source material that might liven up the classroom, I came upon the following music clip on YouTube. The singer is Janet Greene, and the song is called "Fascist Threat." It is a trip, to say the least, and not in a good way, but so fucked up I had to share:



Greene was apparently hired by an anti-Communist crusader named Fred Schwarz to provide a soundtrack to the growing far-right movement of the time. As I told my students, this stuff wasn't especially popular and with good reason, but it shows how the political right was attentive to the power of popular culture and sought to appropriate it for its own ends. The roots of the Tea Party movement, on some level, lie here.

Stepping on Stage

I haven't written about it much on this blog, but I'm a guitarist. I've been playing since I was 9 years old, more or less, which means I've been playing more than 30 years now. And, I'm pretty good. A bit rough around the edges. After all, despite my music department affiliation, I'm almost entirely self-taught. I read music, but like many if not most rock guitarists I mainly play by ear. More to the point, my technique is a bit of a hodge-podge. I more or less flail about with my right (picking) hand, I can play fast staccato only up to a point before I lose my grounding, especially when I have to switch from one string to another. My left hand is more reliable and I can work up a good head of steam when I'm playing in a more legato (hammer-on and pull-off) manner. But there's a lot of imperfection in my approach, which is mostly fine but sometimes I wish it were otherwise.

Here's the thing - because there's gotta be a thing right? In all my years of playing, I've almost never been in a band, and haven't even spent all that much time playing with other people. As a musician I'm something of a lone wolf. Which is how I am in most other areas of my life, I guess, so no harm done. But, it means my playing is done almost entirely in private - my public appearances over the years have been few and far between. And thus, when I do play in public it's sort of a big deal, for me if no one else.

I made one of my rare appearances this past Saturday night. The occasion was typically Smith: the annual "Montage" concert, held during Family Weekend, when all the parents come to visit their collegiate offspring and are shown the College's idea of a good time. The concert is designed to showcase most of the main performing groups at Smith: orchestra, glee club, chorus, handbell choir (!), wind ensemble, and the many a capella singing groups. So where did I fit in? I was a guest soloist of sorts, playing lead guitar for a version of Boston's "Foreplay/Long Time," with a small rock band comprising myself, the orchestra/glee club conductor Jonathan on bass, the department accompanist Jerry on rhythm guitar, and a student named Jamie on drums. Oh yes, and the college organist, Grant, playing the giant pipe organ in the College's biggest public auditorium. Did I mention that we were accompanying the combined glee club and chorus, who provided the vocals? Does this sound as weird as I think it does?

Thing is, it was kind of a hoot, in its way. There's something so incongruous about playing lead guitar at a College event meant to boost the family spirit, and at the same time such incongruities are pretty much what I've based most of my life around. I played through my little 10 watt Line 21 amp and was easily audible above 100 unmiked voices. The audience was pretty big - I'd guess 1500 or so - and genuinely appreciative. And truth be told, I tore it up. Sure I hit a few bum notes here and there but I don't think anyone cared enough to notice. And today when I walked into class one of my students said my solo on Saturday "melted" her face, which I guess is a good thing. So, in tribute to coming momentarily out of my shell, here's some Boston for ya.


Boston · Long Time
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The State of the Record Industry

Last week, out of the blue, I started getting free issues of Rolling Stone delivered to my mailbox. I have no idea why, but I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so as long as they keep coming, I'll keep reading them. I'm not especially keen on the magazine's music coverage these days - they have some good writers on staff but the choices they make about who to feature betray their Boomer orientation far too much (the lead reviews in the two issues I've received thus far were of albums by Neil Young and Eric Clapton, respectively; not exactly finger-on-the-pulse-of-popular-culture choices). But, they do some of the better left-oriented political reporting to be found in such a mainstream publication, and that's reason enough to pay attention.

What has me writing though, is a piece by U2 manager Paul McGuinness that appeared in the September 30 issue, titled "How to Save the Music Business." [Addendum: After doing a bit of online research, I see that this article is an abridged version of one that appeared in the British version of GQ, which you can access here.]

I should note up front that I'm not much of a U2 fan. Sure, I have some of their albums and there is some very good music on them. But the band's - and specifically Bono's - self-righteous sense of purpose has never sat well with me. I like it when I agree with a band's politics, but I don't like people with messiah complexes and Bono has one in spades, something that came through loud and clear back when I saw the band play in 1987 on the Joshua Tree tour.

So, apparently, does the group's manager, McGuinness, who sets himself up as the man with the plan to "save" the music industry in this article. What the industry needs to be saved from, as I'm sure you can guess, is the free circulation of music that has been growing by leaps and bounds for the past decade due to the expanding reach of the internet. This is hardly news, but McGuiness tries to insist that the time is approaching when people are more willing to see that the free circulation of music has a down side that might outweigh the benefits.

McGuinness makes one salient point in this article: that "free" music isn't simply free, but relies on the availability of high-speed internet service, the provision of which is a major source of revenue for various large telecomm corporations. True enough. And he's also justified in claiming that access to free music and other similar content has been one of the major engines that has led to such a growth in the demand for such services.

Where he loses me and, I'm sure, many others who care about these matters, is in his effort to paint the music industry as a victim within this process. If McGuinness was willing to acknowledge the industry's own power as a cultural gatekeeper and a profit engine that generates a lot more income for record industry workers than for artists, his efforts would be on more solid ground. But he writes from the perspective of someone whose clients are the members of one of the most lucrative performing entities in the history of rock, who have a vested interest in the existing state of the music industry that isn't shared by those on the bottom rungs of the ladder to success.

There is an arrogance in McGuinness's perspective that's hard to miss. It's the same arrogance that I so often detect in Bono, such that even when he's speaking on behalf of something I fully support, I feel skeptical. When McGuinness asserts that "it is facile to blame record companies" for the economic dilemma they face, he just seems to be declaiming any responsibility on the part of those within the industry. He tries to make it sound like "free" music is taking money away from those who rightly deserve it, meaning the creative artists and those who serve them. But, realistically, following the logic of his own argument, it's more about one set of large corporations (telecomm companies) siphoning money away from another (record companies). Of course, even this paints too black and white a picture since in the current media environment, no major record company exists that is not part of some larger entertainment conglomerate. And where artists are concerned, the evidence I've seen suggests that they are just as likely to benefit from the free flow of musical information as they are to lose from it. For every group that loses some royalties they may otherwise have earned, there are probably five who gain access to listeners they may never have reached otherwise, which could mean more attendance at shows, more merch sales, or even sales of music that might otherwise never see the light of day.

I'm no utopian thinker when it comes to the potential of digital media. Like anything, the new technology (which isn't all that new anymore) has its ups and downs. Truth be told, I don't even download much "free" music. As I've written elsewhere on this blog, I'm old school in my listening habits. I like vinyl, I still buy lots of CD's, and I don't own an iPod or particularly enjoy listening to music through my computer. But I think the free circulation of music has benefits that outweigh the costs. The biggest such benefit is that it has brought loads of music back into circulation that had long been unavailable, and the commercial record labels would have no reason to reissue because of the lack of potential for profit. Having such an archive available, unruly and disorganized as it is, is all the justification I need not to let record industry interests dictate the flow of music.

Stooges Reflections, Long Overdue

"Iggy is like a matador baiting the vast dark hydra sitting afront him – he enters the audience frequently to see what’s what and even from the stage his eyes reach out searchingly, sweeping the joint and singling out startled strangers who’re seldom able to stare him down. It’s your stage as well as his and if you can take it away from him, why, welcome to it. But the King of the Mountain must maintain the pace, and the authority, and few can. In this sense Ig is a true star of the rarest kind – he has won that stage, and nothing but the force of his own presence entitles him to it."

That was Lester Bangs writing back in 1970, in one of the best pieces of rock criticism ever to see the light of day. Back then, Iggy Pop shattered the rock and roll proscenium in ways that were unprecedented. His presence on stage was uncanny in its physicality and the audience had to always be on its toes when Iggy was on the stage due to his tendency to call people out or move from the stage to the floor and back again at a time when such things were far from ordinary.

Now, 40 years later, Iggy's stage diving isn't quite as radical as it once was. That's the price of being influential...what was disruptive is now just another part of the show. Not that it's not still a kick to see 60-something Iggy, his body withered but still lean and mean, jump head first into the crowd, or wander into the audience with mic in hand, singing while getting up close and personal, as he did several times during the Stooges recent show at the Boston House of Blues. But the charge of novelty is no longer there. The kick comes from seeing an old veteran take ownership over the moves he pioneered way back when.

On the other hand, Iggy's willingness to break the boundary between stage and floor, audience and performer, moves in the other direction as well: yeah it's cool when he leaps into the crowd, but at this point in time his more radical move may be inviting the crowd to join him on the stage. He did this when I saw him play with the Stooges at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony back in March, but then it was a crowd full of rock stars and industry moguls and while a good little crowd joined him on stage it was mostly folks like Billie Joe Armstrong and Eddie Vedder. But at the House of Blues, it was a much bigger crowd who joined Iggy when he beckoned them to come onstage for the song "Shake Appeal" (a fun song from Raw Power, not necessarily the high point of the Stooges catalog but good nonetheless). I didn't count but I'd guess maybe 50, maybe 60 people went on stage, maybe more. And Iggy sang, and he danced, and they danced too, some basking in the spotlight, some trying to hog attention, some just happy to have a moment close to the star of the show. Men and women alike, they projected a genuine air of giddy enthusiasm, and Iggy seemed happy to have the company.

To really get the subversive character of this moment in the show, though, you had to keep your eyes on the bouncer. A bouncer's job is, at root, to preserve a certain modicum of order, and that order depends on making sure the stage stays clear of all unwanted intrusions. So what's a bouncer to do when the singer invites anyone who wants to join him up on stage? In this case, the bouncer tailed Iggy like his life depended on it. Iggy seemed like he could give a fuck - although maybe this was just part of his act, who knows - but the bouncer continually pried away anyone who got just a little too close. To his credit, he kept his cool. He recognized that Iggy was calling the shots and so, damn the usual club rules, he had to go along.

The real kicker, though, came when the song was over. "Shake Appeal" came fairly early in the set, and once it was done, the show was set to go on. But first, all those dozens of people who joined Iggy on stage had to get off, and that took a good 5 minutes at least. Awkward pause mingled with weirdly casual exchanges as the lucky several wanted to get their handshake in or just say hi to Iggy, who seemed somewhere between impatient and bemused by the whole thing. As just another guy on the floor, I found it a puzzling piece of showmanship but also kind of brilliant. Sure, Iggy was still the proverbial King of the Mountain when all was said and done, but in demonstrating his power he also showed himself a figure who was still willing and able to go against the grain of expectation.

On the Radio ... Again.

I seem to be developing a minor sideline as a radio personality, thanks to local DJ Monte Belmonte of 93.9, WRSI (the River). Those who have been reading this blog might recall that earlier this year I did a series of spots for the River celebrating Black History Month. Now, I've been doing a new set offering brief snapshots of key moments in rock history, timed to coincide with the start of the new school year in this valley that is so rich with institutions of higher learning. Those wanting to hear some samples of my on-air musical wisdom can find them here.

No fun? No, fun!

September's just a day a way, school is back in session in a week. What's an academic boy to do?

Go see Iggy and the Stooges, that's what!

I'm going to see them tonight at House of Blues in Boston. I saw the Stooges earlier this year when I attended the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in NYC (which I blogged about below). It was awesome but they only played two songs that night. So now I'll get to see them play a whole set.

I usually don't make a point of heading out of town for shows. Chalk it up to my non-driver status. But who would I make a special effort to see if not the Stooges? I mean, Iggy's on the cover of my book fer Chrissakes! (Look to your upper right for proof.) And amazingly this Boston show is only one of three U.S. shows they're doing to lead up to their appearance at the big All Tomorrow's Parties shindig next weekend in upstate New York. Thanks to my friend and neighbor Bob Moore for providing the evening's transport. Should be a real cool time.

A more detailed report to follow in the days to come...