Urgh!

A lot of contrasts lately in life and death, and in their respective ceremonies: James Brown, Gerald Ford, Saddam Hussein, Joyce Farris. Today at Duke Divinity School in the new Goodson Chapel, things were low-key and sweet, with contrasting styles -- a Born Again Christian (sounding nuts), a genteel, thoughtful Quaker (good rep for the Society of Friends), and the best speaker of all, ten year old Kelsea, Joyce's granddaughter -- precocious and brimming with emotion, too. In quieter moments of the memorial, though, I kept imagining James Brown on stage performing "Superbad."

In any case, the other contrasts were far more startling, so it's good to segue back to Wall of Voodoo, driving through Chapel Hill and remembering the trip my friend Bill and I took to New Orleans for Mardi Gras in 1983. On a whim like Duane and Sonny in The Last Picture Show heading off for Mexico, we drove seventeen hours to dive into the wildness and returned as whipped and broke but also as experienced as Larry McMurtry's characters. Luckily, Gail, a cousin of mine, put us up for the whole time (about five days and nights), though her husband John, a professor at Tulane University, was a little less enthusiastic about having us young hooligans camping out in the living room of their shotgun apartment.

We had a fantastic time, but that's not the point here. The Wall of Voodoo thread leads to a fine sampling of music from 1980 by way of Urgh! A Music War (1981) that illustrates, from the perspective of 2007, the truth in Bob Dylan's recent observation -- there has been very little musical innovation in the past twenty-five years (I believe he said something like the new music sucks). It all peaked by the early 80s -- New Wave, in the grand scheme of things, came hard on the heels of Punk, with reggae, ska, rap, and techno already well established and rather than improved upon, long since corporatized like all the bowl games and stadiums these days. Urgh shows the last of the really new stuff, which pretty much became pitifully dulled or poncified by 1984, 1985 tops.

Bill and I would come back about 4 a.m. or at dawn, still wasted from Hurricanes and voodoo traces, and flip on the TV and watch stuff. This is how, early one morning, we chanced across Urgh!, which we watched twice during the course of regrouping for another round of Mardi Gras. And it was fabulous. I bought the soundtrack a few months later.

Urgh! treats the viewer to a variety of bands, singers, and venues, all very of the time, by comparison to which things are now hopelessly zombified:

Driven to Tears - The Police
Back in Flesh - Wall of Voodoo
Enola Gay - Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark
Ain't This the Life - Oingo Boingo
Respectable Street - XTC
We Got the Beat - The Go-Go's
Total Eclipse - Klaus Nomi
Ku Klux Klan - Steel Pulse
Uncontrollable Urge - Devo
Puppet - Echo & the Bunnymen
Tear It Up - The Cramps
Bad Reputation - Joan Jett & the Blackhearts
Birdies - Pere Ubu
Down in the Park - Gary Numan
Shadow Line - The Fleshtones
He'd Send in the Army - Gang of Four
Homicide - 999
Beyond and Back - X
Model Worker - Magazine
Sign of the Cross - Skafish

This is not a complete list. Also, the movie has more than the soundtrack -- like Dead Kennedys (John Lennon was shot on December 8, 1980, so I suppose they thought the name too edgy and too close to the latest high profile murder). Apparenty, the vaults for this movie contain three times what was actually aired, so when the DVD makes light, it'll be extra cool.

Finally, in response to Jim's query, yes, Wall of Voodoo had an indie hit with "Mexican Radio," which I once stooped to dancing to in a Clint Eastwood Italian Western style getup. Ludicrous! But fun. The political context (and everything does have a political context) was that we'd just had to sign up for Selective Service in expectation that we would get drafted to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, as we were led to believe by our fearless leaders. Luckily for us, that didn't happen. The US Government instead funneled money and weapons to their friends, the Mujahideen (or Mahajadeen, "strugglers"), including Osama Bin Laden, because he was fighting the Russians, and Saddam Hussein, because he was fighting the Iranians as well as gassing the pesky Kurds and Shi'ites, and Manuel Noriega in Panama, because he was an avowed anti-communist and sworn enemy of the Sandinistas. Ah, the banal and disgusting ironies of history. All our friends were going to be strangers, indeed. George Orwell couldn't have dreamt up a crazier plot or perversion of the English language via doublespeak than what really has happened since 1980. Too bad new music hasn't kept apace, not by a long shot.

Today's Rune: Movement.