When I was five years old, “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts was everything to me. It was my most favorite song ever, I loved it to pieces, it represented me. I was a little rocking five year old. Okay, so I had some Strawberry Shortcake records (and I cried when the kids we babysat dumped powder all over them and used them as plates for their tea party) but I was raised on Kiss, the J. Geils Band, Blue Oyster Cult, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Queen. There wasn’t much else for me to love, aside from Barbie, but I wasn’t allowed to have Barbies until I turned 8. So. Yes. Joan Jett spoke for me.
Years later I was growing up, and it was fourth grade when my buddy Chris announced he was moving to California that summer. I was devastated. Not only did I have a crush on him, but he played Transformers with me and we listened to Bon Jovi together. Needless to say, “Never Say Goodbye” became my anthem. Funny thing is that I ended up moving that summer to another school district, and he didn’t end up moving at all. That doesn’t mean that the superhaired singer didn’t still represent the outpourings of my prepubescent heart.
But as I grew older, my tastes wandered, and I didn’t have a lot of favorites. Life was changing very quickly and everything was changing in the blink of an eye. I couldn’t settle on one song before another would steal a corner of my heart, only to be replaced three days later. I was listening to New Kids On The Block as often as I was listening to Motley Crue and Guns ‘n’ Roses.
Then came high school.
Then came Lillian Axe’s “Ghost of Winter.”
And then came Dream Theater’s “Space-Dye Vest.”
And damn near everything on Liz Phair’s Exile In Guyville album.
Such an intro, just to honestly get to that one particular artist.
I became a devotee of Liz Phair a couple of years after the indie, hip kids started gushing about how brilliant she was. I bought the first disc after I bought Whip-smart, actually. So I don’t have indie cred there. But damn near every song was something I could relate to.
“6’1″” because I’m short.
“Help Me Mary” because I hoped for karmic retribution on friends who had wronged me.
“Dance of the Seven Veils” to celebrate dumping my horrid, cheating ex.
“Canary” was representational of a lot of my wandering, lost friends.
“Fuck And Run” — once again, the evil ex. This just said it all better than I could ever think to say it.
“Girls! Girls! Girls!” was my anthem of empowerment.
“Shatter”… well, actually, that one is sort of a current anthem.
“Johnny Sunshine” followed in that trend of ex hatred. Funny how I bought the CD only a month before that all went down.
“Stratford-On-Guy” just felt like my future. My map of life. My head, just plain me.
“Strange Loop” was an extension of the above song, representing all the good, bad, and ugly in a much more straightforward manner.
And then there was “Divorce Song”. This was in a class of its own and not only did it speak for me and the entire way that I handle the demise of a relationship, but contains the stanza I have quoted hundreds of times to friends in shitty situations:
it’s harder to be friends than lovers
And you shouldn’t try to mix the two
Cause if you do it and you’re still unhappy
Then you know that the problem is you
Get it? Got it? Good.
And:
And the license said
You had to stick around until I was dead
But if you’re tired of looking at my face I guess I already am
I swear, the wisdom of Ms. Liz on that disc was obscenely monumental. To me, it was a bible. And honestly, if it’s the philosophy of Phair that one follows, chances are they’re going to have a f*cktacular sex life and deal really well with the aftermath of a bad relationship choice.
But Liz Phair changed a lot over the years. I could lament that she’s never re-done “Batmobile” from her Girlysound Demos, a song which epitomized my feelings being stuck in tiny-town Iowa, and that the blatantly offense-rousing “H.W.C.” from her self-titled, super-poppy commercial disc, has nothing on the beautiful offense of “Black Market White Baby Dealer”. But that’s what happens to artists. They have to do something, right? Grow, prosper? I mean, look at Metallica. It’s a natural progression to cease innovating and try to cash in on your name.
So I wasn’t exactly looking for Phair’s new disc, Somebody’s Miracle, to be a mouthpiece for me at all. But upon hearing it, I was surprised at her return to brilliant, introspective, and wry lyricism. She kept a lot of the pop gloss, but snuck in some intelligent bits underneath to fool the unsuspecting mainstream audience. Lovely, that Liz.
Unfortunately, nothing she has to say resonates with me anymore. And that’s sort of sad.
It’s one thing to outgrow music, to outgrow a favorite song. It’s the way life goes. People mature, change, get wise to the lessons of humanity. What once was a buoy for everything milling around in one’s emotion factory eventually sinks and a newer, more helpful raft comes along to pick up the slack. And it’s also natural for an artist to change with time, yes. But for an artist to be saying things he/she has been saying for years in different voices, and suddenly the words they speak are no longer relatable? It’s sort of a jolt. It’s a familiar language, but it’s no longer comprehensible. And it almost makes you feel a little bit like you’re the one who’s the foreigner.
I haven’t yet hit my mid-life crisis like Liz has on this album. I haven’t been through rehab, I haven’t been divorced, I don’t have kids, and I’m not a rock star. This is what she’s singing about these days, and it’s not me at all. Nearly her entire first album was me, and she’s not me anymore. The Siamese link has been successfully separated, and I keep find myself reaching for that ghost limb.
Someday I’ll find a new voice, or maybe I’ll simply become a stronger one of my own.
But reaching back it occurs to me
There will always be some kind of crisis for me,
–gloomchen
