Freedom Rock

Now there are two guys playing bass and a 45-year-old who looks like an overgrown fratboy in tennis sneakers—a realtor maybe?—positively shredding a sky blue Stratocaster. He has spared the appearance of funk to make room for the actual state. I have a $2 pint and am vainly reading an article in the Atlantic about the current state of al Qaeda. This is Jam Night; this is Labor Day; this is the Thunderbird Café in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The band plays 6-minute versions of Steve Miller and Johnny Watson songs. “Take me to church!” the singer pleads. “Hey Bob, yeah, can you get that church organ up in here?” Bob is getting nervous changing the patch on his synthesizer. When Bob gets loose he slaps the keys like a duck tail on the surface of the water and scrunches his face up. All of my friends are deep in their fantasy football draft.

Richard, Your Postman (an indie-pop band I’m in with my friend Thomas) recorded four new songs in the bathroom of a vascular surgeon’s house. The surgeon and his wife came home early and I scrambled to pack things up. We were not supposed to be there. They had a nice rec room and V8 and VH1 Classics. Sorry, Steve; sorry, Susan; I played some music and used your wireless and then walked your dog and showered and took a sleeping pill on your couch. Nothing funny.

This article in Salon was a bell. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to have pop music exist in restrictive societies or political climates. I sorta realize that it’s a capitulation of historical fetishes I’ve had since I was a teenager—Soviet art, the Cultural Revolution, the amazing dynamic between African musicians and the regimes they function in. Thaddeus Russell says “Hey, if you’re a transient, which sounds good to me by the way, why not go to one of these countries and write about music there?” I am looking into it. In my email to him I’d said “While I can’t say that Beyonce is exactly who I’d pick to fly our cultural flag, that’s not really the issue–the fact that it happens voluntarily is what makes it fascinating (sigh, marketing, I know, but still).” My morals are sliding around. The people at the Thunderbird just want some light funk and an Iron City; the UAE wants more booty popping. I’d sooner ship Animal Collective, but okay. We’ll see. Maybe I will go. Today the world is big and the world is small.