After the New Year my job slows down. Not the jarring, sudden crash you might expect in a business so dependent on the hearty, extravagant art of gift giving, more of a paddle your raft out of the white water into the placid shallows for a few precious seconds. It can be a difficult transition from the breakneck dash of the holidays to the leisurely stroll of early January. You need to find something to cushion the shock.
In the 1980s things looked bleak and seemed to be getting worse. It was a terrifying time, there were dirty little wars boiling everywhere, Iraq and Iran were locked in a struggle of odious regimes that seemed like the prelude to the apocalypse. Two trucks filled with explosives crashed into a barracks housing American and French troops in Beirut killing 307 people. There were hijackings of airplanes and a cruise ship.
President Reagan twisted Star Wars from entertainment to an ambitious plan to counter Soviet nuclear weapons with a combination of spaced based x-ray lasers and particle beams, among other equally ambitious and equally questionable atmospheric deterrent systems, none of which were developed or tested. It was an idea with political rewards, even if it wouldn’t work, and most experts agreed it wouldn’t; Reagan could claim to be attempting to avoid nuclear holocaust. Of course, experts pointed out, if the Soviets thought a missile defense might work, and they would have been among a small few who felt that way, they might decide to fire all the missiles in all the silos and submarines and truck based launchers before they became useless. It set everybody on edge, except for the president.
Nothing made sense, and I was looking for answers. I had a subscription to Time Magazine and Newsweek. I pored over them, trying to find meaning. I would pick up newspapers in cafes, the lunch counter at Woolworths (if anybody remembers that), occasionally when the need got too bad I would buy them. It didn’t matter what paper, the Lincoln Journal Star, the Omaha World Herald, The Denver Post, even the miniscule local paper, the North Platte Telegraph. There had to be meaning somewhere. I would clip articles and carefully assemble them in a re-purposed photo album.
In early August, 1986 I was reading that weeks’ Time Magazine and there was a review of the Del-Lords, they had recently released the “Johnny Comes Marching Home” album. It was a rock and roll revival band, passionate, fiery, unapologetic. Everybody needs a distraction occasionally, so I went out and bought the album. It was amazing, moving, perfect for the time, and all the time since then.
I’ve never stopped listening.
Tuesday was the first time I’ve ever just jumped in the deep end and let the rhythm carry me through the day.
About 2:30 it hit me, everything you need to know about life can be found in a Del-Lords song. It’s hard, because the music is so good. On “Get Tough” from the band’s first album Frontier Days (from 1984) they take American imperialism to task, “We’re in Beirut, we’re still in Nicaragua, we’re all over Asia and Europe, and today we’re in Grenada.” These are a little dated, to be sure, but if the names were changed it would be just as true today. The nouns change but the verb remains the same. I’ve often wonder what they could have done with headlines from the Trump presidency.
It gets better; the band goes after corruption in city governments, the inexorable strangling of the middle class and the plight of homelessness. And the song is only 4 minutes and 16 seconds long. Plus, it works so well as a rock and roll song you have to go read the lyrics to see the anger and disappointment.
There are so many songs, punctuated by perfectly timed whoops and hollers, harmonizing that would make Motown proud. And there is the music, oh, that wonderful music. From the driving, irresistible backbeat that leaves you battered, bruised and begging for more, to the exquisite, mathematical precision of the guitars and bass, played so adroitly they sound as if they are all being handled by one person.
Listening to the Del-Lords is similar to taking therapy. You have the moments of discovery, often in short, articulate bursts that expose the pain of betrayal and the inevitability of acceptance. In “Shame on You,” (Frontier Days) “Well you don’t see me around, I’m not downtown too much these days, I try to stay away, I don’t want to answer no questions, I don’t want to hear no suggestions, I’m a little bit embarrassed by the truth, and I’m really ashamed of you.” There is no better description of the disappointment caused by the betrayal of duplicitous friend. The line about being embarrassed by the truth is illuminating. The real agony is always the belief that you were foolish enough to so blindly give your trust. Nobody ever wants to admit that.
It’s easy to overlook the depth and wisdom of the songs because you’re enjoying the music so much. It was more than music, though; it was a sacred ritual, almost religious in its intensity, as old as man and as vital as nourishment.
It wasn’t all manic, wild rock and roll either, there were moments of self appraisal and some of crushing loss. If you want to see a man thinking about his life, listen to Flying (On Elvis Club, the fifth album, and I fear the last). “People tell me ‘in life you got to roll the dice sometimes,’ I tell ‘em ‘rolling the dice, well, that’s a way of life, at least it’s always been mine.’” If you need to find what the bottom looks like, where pain and heartache live, try Poem of the River, (From Based on a True Story) “I’m listening to the poem of the river, watching the ghosts on the shore, empty beer cans, pots and knives, there’s nothing stainless in our little life, the past is waiting just outside our door.”
For 40 years I’ve been listening and enjoying the gospel of the lower east side. “Grab some records and grab some beers we can just hang out right here.” I can’t think of a better plan.
It’s always fascinated me that a band with so much talent, so much spark, so much music, never became arena rockers. It defies explanation. They were a perfect machine taking experience and knowledge, pain and joy, love and loss and creating art. Art that honored the greats of rock and roll and looking back I never heard anybody greater, and I’ve been listening for a long time. Whenever I used to put on a Del-Lords album I always wished I was cooler, now I wish I was smarter, too.
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