#99, April 27, 2006

Changing the Guard

When did the 1960s end? Well, how about with the release of the Steely Dan album, “Can’t Buy a Thrill”? Well you may have to be prone (as I surely am) to engaging in exaggeration to agree with me. But, whether or not it is true that this album ended the Sixties, it certainly announced its close. I don’t have all the songs at my fingertips at this moment, but let’s start with the first song, “Do It Again.”

This is a pretty simple song that, for me at least, harkens back to the early songs of The Beatles – like “Love Me Do” and “Please Please Me.” But while these Lennon-McCartney songs presaged a binge of utopianism, Donald Fagan and Walter Becker’s “Do it Again” seems to presage a closing down of possibilities. We are stuck in a cycle just doing things again and again, there’s nothing much new going down; we certainly aren’t creating a new world, not by any means. You can’t even get a good hanging when you have done wrong and you deserve to be hanged – you are put back on the street, “wheel turning round and round.” Moreover, love can only bring you sorrow: “All the time you know she’s smiling, you’ll be on your knees tomorrow” (that’s no sixties sentiment). And so forth. That wheel just seems to keep on turning round and round.

Then look at “Dirty Work.” How dismal. “Times are hard and you’re afraid to pay the fee, so you find yourself somebody who can do the job for free…” That must be me, being abused by you – exploited. Hey, am I going to go to the barricades with my buddies? I don’t think so.

I’m a fool to do your dirty work,

I don’t want to do your dirty work

no more.

No, I’m just the fool. Even if I can foresee terrible trouble, I stay here just the same. It’s a sordid suburban world, with romantic dreams of medieval castles that actually don’t really amount to a hill of beans. The old protest against suburbia, getting out onto the road to escape, getting high perhaps, hasn’t really ended with nirvana; it has ended here with some dirty work, with the maid sent home early. Big deal.

OK, another song. “Reelin’ in the Years”:

Are you reelin’ in the years?

stowin’ away the time?

are you gathering up the tears?

have you had enough of mine?

Great guitar playing from Jeff “Skunk” Baxter – but where’s this going? – round and round again, that’s where. “You’ve been saying you’re a genius since you were seventeen, and all the time I’ve known you I don’t know what you mean…” Well that is just plain brilliant writing.

And then the piece de end-of-the-French-Resistance: “Only a fool would say that.” Here’s the end of the revolution fully enunciated, if you ever needed it:

A world become one

of salads and sun

only a fool would say that.

A boy with a plan

a natural man

wearing a white Stetson hat.

Unhand that gun be gone

there’s no one to fire upon;

if he’s holding it high

he’s telling a lie.

I heard it was you

talking about a world

where all is free

it just couldn’t be

and only a fool would say that.

The man in the street

dragging his feet

don’t want to hear the bad news;

imagine your face

there in his place

standing inside his brown shoes.

You do his Nine-to-Five,

drag yourself home half alive;

there on the screen

a man with a dream.

I heard it was you…etc.

Bridge – love those bridges…

Anybody on the street

has murder in his eyes…

You feel no pain

and you’re younger

than you realize…

So much for utopia – only a bloody fool would say that. Shame really. But life’s a little more conflictual; it has people in it.

And then, if we aren’t convinced yet, how about this song: “Changing of the Guard”? Love the “Skunk” – you just have to. “If you listen you can hear it, it’s the laughter in the street…”

All the signs are right this time –

if you live in this world

you’re feeling the change of the guard…

Na na na na na na na na nah

It’s over, baby…end of Marxist-Lennonism. Oh well! If you live in this world, you’re feeling the change of the guard.

Na na na na na na na na nah