Norman Rockwell vs Iggy Pop
by Chris Adams
illustration by Jef Taylor
It’s my Tuesday afternoon lunchbreak, and like every Tuesday afternoon lunchbreak, I’m on the subway headed to Harvard Square to check out the new releases at Newbury Comics and scan the English music papers (NME, Melody Maker) at Out of Town News. As the train screeches to a gradual halt, and the passengers pour out of the cars and head down the ramp that leads to the turnstiles and escalators, I feel a subdued excitement in my gut, a sensation I get whenever I make this trek. Oh, it’s not as strong as it used to be – when I was 17 or 18 there were times when I felt like practically running to Newbury Comics – but it’s still there. There’s that promise, the slight possibility that I’m gonna walk over to the New Releases Section and there will be a 2-CD collection of previously unreleased Television outtakes, or an Eyeless in Gaza compilation with “Whitewash” on it, or maybe a Crucial Three b-sides boxed set put out by some obscure label with excellent taste but iffy business sense. Maybe the NME‘ll have a retrospective exposé on The Subway Sect, or announce an upcoming release date for a lost Love album, or maybe Melody Maker will come with a free cassette featuring previously unreleased Spiritualized, Patti Smith, and Radiohead tracks on it.
As I walk along the platform, I wonder, How many times have I strolled along this subterranean pathway looking at the familiar blue Hudson newsstand sign, the portable carts selling cheap sunglasses and p.c. Guatemalan outerwear to assuage those plagued by cultural guilt? I calculate: “OK, let’s say an average of twice a week a year – that’s about 100, times 12 years (this habit started way back in 1984) – shit, that’s like 1200 times.” Twelve hundred times. On one-thousand, two-hundred separate occasions I’ve dropped a subway token, destination, Harvard Square, so I could hustle to the Garage and feverishly examine a buncha pop records, or leaf through a coupla newspapers and read the latest about people who make sounds with guitars and drums. Suddenly, I’m overcome by a feeling of profound embarrassment. I furtively glance around at the other folks walking toward the escalator, self-conscious, as if they can read my mind, as if they’re aware of how many times I’ve made this childish journey in my never-ending mission for more and better records. Just next to me is a guy, looks roughly my age, with the whole package together: swank-looking suit, crisply dry-cleaned, hair slicked back with a buncha Brylcreem or similar goop, shoes that look like they cost more than what I make in a month, and a gold-fastened briefcase that appears to be made outta pressed caramel or something. Clearly, this fella’s on the fast track. He’s out there in the world, a mover and shaker, cutting deals, making things happen, pushing the envelope, tossing greenbacks in the bank, thinking about equity, filling his ritzy apartment with complicated electronic black matte gadgets. Anybody who’d care to make a quick visual comparison between me and this guy would conclude that we’re in separate tax brackets in about half a second. I’m wearing an ancient brown suede car-coat, 5-year old jeans with massive rips in both the knees, and a pair of low-cut Cons. The sudden awareness of my slovenly appearance leads me to appraise my current life situation. Let’s see… I’ve got about 20 bucks to last the rest of the week, I’m working a completely dead-end bullshit job that totally belies my education, I rent a cheap, freezing loft downtown with furniture that looks like a herd of mismatching dinosaurs crept into my space and just croaked. I spend my free time reading Greil Marcus, Jack Rabid, and Lester Bangs, listening to records, writing music reviews for a mid-sized independent magazine that doesn’t pay me, and running my own moneypit of a ‘zine about a cult band with a core following possibly smaller than Wang Chung’s. I don’t own a fucking iron, never mind a car, I’m not married, and I’m just two years shy of thirty. And here I am doing something I coulda been doing in October, 1984. Odds are fair that I’m wearing some of the same clothes!
What’s up? I feel like I turned seventeen and just abruptly stopped growing. Why is this? Just ‘cos I heard Johnny Rotten spitting some vitriol on an import Never Mind the Bollocks LP when I was thirteen? Just ‘cos the Clash’s “White Man In Hammersmith Palais” sent shivers down my spine the first time I heard it? Shouldn’t I have outgrown this? After all, at the end of the day, they’re just pop records, aren’t they? I should be married, I should be making something of myself, I should be getting on with my life and leaving the trappings of adolescence behind me. After all, Chris, there’s more to life than a stack of Velvet Underground bootlegs and Iggy Pop demos, right? Time to buckle down and grow up, huh, buddy? Time for that one-way trip to the corner of Responsibility and Respectability Blvd., don’tcha think? I mean, “grow up” – what exactly does that entail? I know a few people roughly my age who seem pretty established in the “adult world” and, to be honest with ya, I’d dig a lot of what they have. I’d love to have a job pulling in 80K a year, with plenty of dough in the bank for spur-of-the-moment trips to Europe and steak tartare at Chez Chi-chi or wherever. I don’t think getting used to zipping around in a ’96 Jaguar would be much of a hassle. I’d have no trouble living in a ritzy $2K-a-month apartment with bay windows and a great view of Elysian Fields, and ceilings higher than Robert Downey Jr. at an Escobar wedding. I could get used to a gorgeous, intelligent wife and a brood of adorable little kids running around the place. This, after all, is the “American Dream,” ain’t it? A good solid career that begets money, which begets a well-cared-for family, which begets a certain degree of respectability – isn’t this what the whole trip is about? I mean, money in and of itself is not a bad thing, and neither is marriage. So, what’s wrong with this picture?
Everything. Everything is wrong with this picture. And how much does it cost? It’ll cost ya exactly one life. I’d say the shared characteristic of all my “grown-up” friends, besides “money, family, and a certain degree of respectability,” is a sense of abject resignation so constant and pronounced it makes Morrissey sound like Deepak Chopra after a night of margaritas and nitrous oxide. And almost all of these friends, at one time or another, have mournfully commented on how jealous they are of me and my life. Why? Because, rather than pursuing their own dreams in their own time, they bought the package, the American Dream as depicted by Norman Rockwell, unaware that it was a shallow farce painted over a hollow Edward Hopper cityscape. The Norman Rockwell painting of life is a lie that documents a world that will really never exist and paints a dream that denies real life in the real world. The American Dream is just that – a dream, an illusion, a death trap, baby, a suicide rap. Trying to turn that dream into a reality becomes a Lynchian nightmare, full of grotesque forced smiles, meaningless pursuits, empty friendships, and a haunting little voice in the back of your mind that says “is that all there is?” So, instead of feeling like they’ve “done the right thing, settled down, found a path” etc., my unfortunate adult friends find that all they’ve really done is made a major fucking mistake. They put on monkey suits and slaver in an undignified Pavlovian manner for a few fucking bucks, which they blow on useless shiny trinkets that collect dust because they didn’t really need them anyway. The cash that bought them no longer has value, it’s blood money – every deposit another reminder of a dream that died from neglect. (Some say youth is wasted on the young, I say, money is wasted on the rich.) The “good, solid job?” It turned out to be a mind-numbing set of repetitive exercises with no creative outlet, designed to make your employer rich as it slowly eats you alive. And after 25 years of this bullshit, ya get an office party, a slap on the back, a gold watch, and a terminal heart condition. How’s that make for an epitaph? “Joe Career-man worked every day for a quarter century in a virtual frontal lobotomy of a job that held no interest whatsoever but when he retired they gave him a fancy gold watch which glistened beatifically in the subdued light of the funeral parlor as we paid him our last respects.”
Marriage? What starts out as something vaguely resembling romance turns out to be a sterile business agreement between two people with little more in common than a mutual desire to escape the “singles scene.” In other words, they simply got tired, gave up, and settled for one another because it was convenient and, well, it was time. What a fucking horrible thought, being “settled for.” I’d rather spend the rest of my life a hermit living in a hut made of my own fecal matter than live with a woman who married me just because she thought I was passable, because I was in the “right place at the right time.” Ya know what that leads to? Ya get as fat as a PMS’ing Carnie Wilson trapped in a bunker fulla Drakes Cakes, sex becomes a gruesome but necessary chore, not unlike cleaning the toilet, and you spend your evenings sucking down cathode rays like they’re holy nectar flowing from Anna Nicole Smith’s breasts because you’d sooner shave your pubes with a rusty filet knife than think of anything to say to a) the unrecognizable shrew formerly known as your gorgeous wife or b) the useless sack of Coors-guzzling shit formerly known as your dashing, distinguished husband. Pure Romeo and Juliet, huh? When the only thing keeping you and your spouse from beating seven shades of shit out of each other is Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and a fifth of Jameson’s, chances are, Harlequin Romance Novels won’t be asking you lovebirds to pose for a cover shot. I’ll betcha five to one that most married couples who file for divorce (that’s something like 55%, by the way) do so during re-run season.
As far as kids go… let’s just say they’re adorable little bundles of joy until they wake you up every hour on the hour when ya gotta work the next day at your suicide-on-the-installment-plan job which ya can’t leave ‘cos you’ve got a fucking family to support (are ya beginning to see how this works?) and the first thing the little tyke does when ya go to calm him down is spit up some unnameably vile yellow liquid by way of thanks. That’ll learn ya the hard way, buddy. From my observations, as opposed to being little bundles of joy, kids are, in fact, little bundles of bodily fluids, tightly packed and ready to blow with nary a moment’s notice. And they’re a lot of fun in Filene’s, too, when ya go in to buy a pair of Polo socks or whatever else the lemmings from the office are wearing this minute, and the little rugrat starts peeling the skin off your face with his non-stop high-pitched Bride of Frankenstein scream because he’s tired? he’s hungry? he’s cranky? Who the hell knows? The kid sure ain’t gonna tell ya – he has no language, and, even if he did, he’s too preoccupied hyperventilating and mortifying you with his blood-curdling shrieks to sit down and have a little chat. And I’m supposed to give up Iggy Pop for this?
Grow up? OK, sure.
You go first.
I’ll be watching from the Stones section.
