Hippies vs. Punks: Souled American's Flubber (1989)

Souled American's Flubber (1989) is a gem I discovered by happenstance the summer of 1990 in a used record store, long shuttered now, near the University of Washington. It was a cassette I took East with me when I went back to New York City that autumn to attempt to salvage my marriage.

Flubber turned out to be a Bush-I era staple of mine. Saturdays, hungover and drinking rich black coffee that I made in one of those aluminum espresso pots inexpensive and widely available in New York City bodegas, I would read from a stack of newspapers accumulated during the work week, maybe a little philosophy too, and wallow in the cracked, tilting, dilatory, burbling and mellifluous sounds of Souled American.

Souled American hailed from Normal, Illinois (a college town of approximately 50,000; home to Illinois State University) and were alt country before the appellation was common. The band walked a razor's edge between high art and lampoonery. In this, Souled American is reminiscent of '60s ersatz Folkies the Godz; the band prefigures Will Oldham's output as well.

The first five cuts on Flubber are stunning. Unfortunately, the only track of the first five available on YouTube is "Wind To Dry":

(The YouTube at the top of the post contains tracks from the album's deliciously soporific second half.)

Souled American's four-album Rough Trade output coincides with the Grunge Age and the presidency of Bush I. It was still possible, though becoming more difficult, to pursue a humble life of small town bohemian creativity. With the "adjuncting" of our universities, the offshoring of much of our industry, the "Amazoning" into obliteration our record stores and bookshops, and the "Walmarting" of our commercial spaces, there is no place left for the penurious bohemian to hang his hat and make his art. Like a polar bear swimming in the sunny Arctic Ocean looking for an ice floe to catch a breather, the bohemian is in real trouble these days. Everyone is hunkering down hoping merely to survive.

Listening to Flubber all this week I couldn't help but smile because I remembered how it felt when I was a young man and I thought that the future was open and roomy, pregnant with possibility. Sure, work was horrible. But I had alcohol and the weekend and my aluminum coffee pot and a stack of books. There was plenty of time to figure a way out of the rat race and paint that masterpiece.

Of course the future has a tendency to disappoint when it actually presents itself. And that is what is so satisfying about the past. It allows us access to a beautiful dream of a future that never appeared.

The Colt 45 Chronicle #68

When my wife and I arrived in New York City one blisteringly hot August we were able to register in time to vote in the general election. In the letter below to my wife's cousin, Sarah, a woman our age who lived and studied music in Boston, I mention that I plan on casting my vote for Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. But I don't think I did. I think I voted the Socialist Party ticket for president.

Dukakis ended up winning in New York but was trounced nationwide by George H.W. Bush. That election is mostly remembered for a series of sound bites from the debates (Lloyd Bentsen's "Senator, You're No Jack Kennedy" disintegration of a bumbling Dan Quayle and Dukakis' bloodless response to the hypothetical rape and murder of his wife, Kitty) as well as two devastatingly effective ads run by the Bush campaign: the tank ad, and the Willie Horton ad. But what is not generally remembered about this race is that Dukakis enjoyed an enormous lead in the polls after the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, something like 21 points, which he proceeded to squander thanks to a series of gaffes.

Lee Atwater directed a shrewd campaign for Bush I. Yes, the tank and Willie Horton ads were ruthlessly effective, but so too was an ad that featured black-and-white stills of gas lines and Hippies protesting and hostages in Tehran blindfolded. The message was "Do want to go back to the social chaos of the 1970s?" The answer from the masses in the fall of 1988 was overwhelming "No." Dukakis was the last Democrat to run for president as an unabashed liberal. Today the social chaos of the 1970s is looking pretty good.

The letter is mostly an analysis of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood (1952), one of my favorite novels at the time, along with Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957) and Charles Bukowski's Ham on Rye (1982). Sarah loved Wise Blood too. The last paragraph reveals a flirtation that Sarah and I carried on. Though it was never consummated, today I find it regrettable; proof of a confused young man bound for decades of moil and suffering.

Autumn 1988

We didn't make it up, but almost. We got on 95 North and after about eight miles the front end starting shaking and sliding like Anchorage back in '64. So I balanced the scale and decided against a 40-mph voyage to Boston. Tomorrow I have the day off to cast a losing ballot for your political pater. I'll take the stallion in for a grease job and an evaluation. Hopefully the ball joints aren't totally shot; if they are, I'm looking at a pretty penny.

Right before we left for Boston to see you we were throwing a bunch of stuff in a duffel bag, and I remembered your copy of Flannery O'Connor. I tossed it in . . . but we never went. So here I was with Sarah's unearthed O'Connor. -- I decided to re-read WISE BLOOD. And I did, and I think I got a little closer to the bottom of that dark swamp deep space which is the twenty-four-old mind that built that story. I used to grind this ax, on my first reading, that Haze was the best man, the best man on earth; a man shrouded everything else in the story; a man who every woman wanted because he was, plain and simple, a man. And, if you notice, this is true: Every woman in the story does want Haze, every single one. Hazel Motes is just about as incredible as you can get. But this time around I didn't notice Haze that much. I saw him more as a worker, a part player, albeit a big part, but a worker nonetheless . Enoch Emery is the one who breathed in my ear. He's "wise blood" (the one who always mentions it); he's the one who guards Eden's gate (a guard at the zoo gate); he's the man who gives names to all the animals. He's the one who steals the new jesus. And he is the one who is taken up by God. But I don't know what the fuck Flannery is trying to say in all of this -- that the world is part Enoch? Part stinking intuitive child? A shit-assed brat that is always right, but always nasty and unacceptable?

I like my first reading better because it made sense. I don't know what the second one means, something dark and deep like Satan and the ocean between the continents and smoking crack. In the end, the story ends with Haze and his pure selfless vision. Flannery wants the man, the hero -- Hazel, who wished his heart was the world and dies like Christ. Enoch is too far out in left field, the black dog panting silently in the bleachers. And I remember that your favorite memory was the image of Enoch in the putty rain brushing up against store fronts, his umbrella inside out, the new jesus crumpled in a brown paper bag on his arm. 

I had a dream of the two of us, you and me, in a room, under a microscope; it was wild and okay; it reminded me of Haze.

Scott Shane on the National Security State

Scott Shane has an important and readable story in the Sunday paper about Obama's national security state and the increased prosecution of leakers.  Shane chronicles the interesting narrative of how former CIA analyst and operative John Kiriakou ended up in DOJ crosshairs.

The plutocracy's renaissance in this country can be tracked to the administration of Gerald Ford.  Rumsfeld and Cheney traded off as White House Chief of Staff.  George H.W. Bush went from RNC Chairman during Watergate to Ford's Chief of the US Liaison Office in the People's Republic of China and then to Director of Central Intelligence, replacing William Colby.  The Agency was hemorrhaging from Seymour Hersh's "family jewels" revelation in the New York Times and the subsequent Church Committee investigations.  The goal was to get the genie back in the bottle.

Here is what Shane says about the Obama administration's attempt to rebottle the genie:

Mr. Obama has presided over twice as many such cases as all his predecessors combined, though at least two of the six prosecutions since 2009 resulted from investigations begun under President George W. Bush. An outcry over a series of revelations last year — about American cyberattacks on Iran, a double agent who infiltrated the Qaeda branch in Yemen and procedures for targeted killings — prompted Mr. Holder to begin new leak investigations that have not yet produced any charges.

The resulting chill on officials’ willingness to talk is deplored by journalists and advocates of open government; without leaks, they note, Americans might never have learned about the C.I.A.’s interrogation methods or the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping. But for supporters of greater secrecy, the chill is precisely the goal.

What does it portend?  Probably the maintenance and continued expansion of drone warfare (a judge ruled recently that even the administration's legal opinion justifying the drone killing -- a.k.a., assassination -- of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki could be kept secret); and in addition to that, continued terror strikes against Iran.