My trip to Washington, DC

The day after the Drive-By Truckers show, feeling numb and emotionally drained from the election results, we left Detroit (after a much needed and good breakfast in the Shinola Hotel restaurant) for Metro Airport. From Metro Airport, we flew to Washington, DC.

Being consistently nervous about ever getting to the airport too late, we made it through TSA and then "set up camp" at our gate a good three hours before our plane departed.

Almost everyone on our plane was watching live coverage of Kamala Harris's speech at Howard University. I initially wanted nothing to do with it, but did end up changing my mind and watching about half of it. It didn't make me feel any less depressed. From there, I watched the first half of a documentary called 26.2 to Life, about a group of San Quentin inmates who train to run a marathon, which is comprised of over 100 laps around the perimeter of the prison yard. It was just the sort of life-affirming, positive content I needed at that moment. (I finished watching the documentary on the flight back to Detroit).

We landed at Reagan between about 5 and 6 PM and hopped on the Metro to the city. I was amazed to discover I still had sufficient funds on my Metro card--at this point, I just keep two Metro cards in my wallet at all times.

As I wrote on Facebook, Washington, DC as a sort of home away from home was not on my "life events bingo card" four years ago. 1987 was the first time I'd ever been to DC, and I hadn't returned until thirty years later, when we took our younger son there on spring break (while older son was on his very first trip to Germany). But then, I fell in with the Rockin' the Suburbs podcast crew (based in "the DMV") and L. started having annual work conferences in Washington. So between Suburbs Fests and tagging along on work conferences, this is the fourth time I've been to Washington since September 2021, and the fifth time since April 2017.

Like last year, when we rolled into Washington in the early evening, we were tired by the time we got into our hotel room. Thus begins the "what do you we want for dinner" conversations, followed by the typing of "restaurants near me" on the mobile phone. (How did we survive before this function existed? I suppose one just had to ask the front desk for recommendations for walk around outside until a suitable eatery was located). As it turned out, we decided on the City Tap Tavern, a place we had gone for lunch the previous year. We didn't realize it was the same place until we got there.

On Thursday morning, I was free to do whatever I wanted in the city. Still thoroughly hungover from the election (a hangover that I suspect will last for months or years), I wasn't in the mood to see any museums that a) were too serious or intellectually challenging or b) showed the United States in its "best" (or at least "idealized" light). I had considered the International Spy Museum for a few days, and upon seeing they had a special exhibition of James Bond movie vehicles, I knew this was just the escapism I need. So, I fueled up on some Starbuck's coffee from the hotel lobby and walked down to the Spy Museum. 

I spent close to three hours at the International Spy Museum. It truly was the escapism I needed. It's chockful of real-life spy gadgets and artifacts from all over the world (hence the "International" in the museum name. It also has a few galleries devoted to the East German Stasi, well-known for surveilling citizens of the German Democratic Republic. 

The museum also has an interactive game that visitors can play in which they take on a fictional "spy" identity and attempt to solve puzzles in order to complete a mission. Aside from a complete failure on my part to decode a secret message (I completely lacked the concentration or inspiration to pull it off), I did fairly well and somehow managed to complete my mission successfully. So maybe I missed my calling as a CIA agent. (Tongue firmly in cheek with that statement).

As for the James Bond vehicle special exhibition, it was okay, but not quite as good as I'd have liked. The vehicles were hardly the "star vehicles" of the movies, but the "co-stars." Instead of the Goldfinger Aston-Martin, we got a newer model Aston-Martin that had been in a Pierce Brosnan-era flick. There wasn't even the Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me. Oh well, I shouldn't complain too much. (Upon further research, it appears that the Goldfinger Aston-Martin was in the museum's atrium, but I somehow missed it. How did that happen? Ugh.)

By the time I left the museum, it was early afternoon and temps in Washington were unseasonably high. I felt a bit exhausted and just wasn't feeling the need to poke around more museums or monuments. I'd entertained thoughts of walking around Arlington National Cemetery, but didn't have the motivation. I was also scheduled to meet up with some Suburbs friends at 7 PM, so I decided to simply head back to the hotel and decompress for a few hours. I plopped on the bed and read the book I brought (a new biography about the MC5).

I met my friends at Capital City Brewing and was touched that so many of them had taken a few hours out of their lives to meet up with me. Jim, Rob, Sam, Nick, Bud, and Bill: I thank you. It was a fun evening of food, drinks, and conversation. (We were actually able to avoid too much election talk. Thankfully, we are all pretty much on the same page politically, so the conversation was full of gallows humor).

On Friday morning, I had more free time, so on a whim I walked over to the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House on Vermont Avenue, about a 20-minute walk from our hotel. (Well, actually about 30 minutes after all the photos I felt compelled to take with my phone). The house is a late Victorian townhouse on this leafy street. It's where Bethune ran the National Council of Negro Women, an organization that worked for the advancement of Black women. I was only vaguely aware that Mrs. Bethune was an educator and Civil Rights leader. She led a fascinating and eventful life and was a tireless advocate for education and social causes. If anyone reading this is more interested in learning about her or the house, I encourage you to visit the National Park Service website. (The house is relatively small and the tour only takes about a half-hour).

From the Bethune house, I wandered back to our hotel on 9th Street. It was another warm and sunny day in Washington--though not quite as warm as the previous day. I walked past the most gloriously smelling restaurant, The Unconventional Diner, on my walk south on 9th Street. When L. had finished with her conference, I recommended we go there for lunch. I was thrilled that the restaurant was just as wonderful as it smelled from the outside. I had the Lebanese fried rice and it was tremendous. So, once again, if anyone out there stumbles upon this blog and wants a restaurant recommendation for the area near 9th and M Streets, go to the Unconventional Diner.

From there, it was gather up our luggage from the concierge and head back to the airport. It was a whirlwind trip to DC. I feel reasonably confident that regardless of whatever chaotic nonsense Trump and his flunkies bring to Washington, the city will just keep on keepin' on--and I'm already looking forward to my next visit.

"And I'm scared shitless of what's coming next"

I saw Drive-By Truckers perform at Saint Andrews Hall in Detroit on election night. As I wrote on social media, "if I'm gonna stress out about the election anywhere, I may as well do it here with Drive-By Truckers.

The whole evening had an eerie feel to it. I was too worried about the election to completely lose myself in the show, which is a shame because the band was absolutely cooking all night. It seemed that Patterson Hood in particularly was full of nervous energy. I know Hood's political leanings and I know he was likely worried about the election as much as I was, but was channeling all of this anxiety into his performance. Of the four times I've seen DBT, this was without a doubt the most incendiary show I'd ever seen.

There were people in the crowd who were looking at their phones at election results. I didn't want to know, though I looked at these folks--most of them middle-aged white people--and tried to surmise who they were rooting for. Though most of DBT's fans, at this point, have leanings to the left, this isn't always the case. I have a feeling the people directly in front of me were Trump supporters. I don't know that for sure, but that is my guess based on their jovial reactions to what they were seeing on their phone screens.

On the subject of looking at ones phone for election results at a fucking rock concert--why they hell would you want to do that? That just baffles me. Live in the moment, you idiots!

I had my phone on long enough to take a few snaps of the band on stage (and I must admit, a brief audio clip), but after that I turned it off. I wanted to be in the moment as much as possible. Given the heaviness of the evening, that wasn't easy.

There was no way Patterson Hood couldn't address the election--and he did. He changed the line "the duality of the Southern thing" from "The Three Great Alabama Icons" to "the duality of the American thing." The duality being the coexistence of understanding/beauty and racism/ugliness in this nation, and how we see it in particular sharp relief now in 2024 (and, without a doubt, in the months and years to follow).

I have buried the lede here. DBT are on a tour in which they are performing their double album Southern Rock Opera in its entirety, and "The Three Great Alabama Icons" is a key song on that album. By the time they reached the end of the album and the closer "Angels and Fuselage," the atmosphere felt funereal. Ostensibly, the song is about an airplane crash. The narrator of the song is in the plane and is facing almost certain death as he says to himself, "and I'm scared shitless of what's coming next." Hearing this song in the context of the election, and having a vague notion that the results would not be favorable, this line took on a whole new meaning.

By about 2:45 AM, in the darkness of our hotel room in downtown Detroit, it was clear that Donald Trump had defeated Kamala Harris, and I was completely and irrevocably scared shitless of what's coming next.

1984 album in review: U2 -- The Unforgettable Fire

It was all because of a girl I met...

That's how I became a U2 fan. To be clear, that's how I learned about the very existence of U2.

In the summer of 1985, almost a full year after The Unforgettable Fire's release, I attended a summer camp at Olivet College. This camp was patterned after Boys or Girls State, but was sort of a low-rent version of that. We were supposed to learn about how the legislative and executive branches of government ran by participating in mock campaigns and elections--or at least I think. I really don't remember much of anything we did at this camp, but I do remember this particular girl. She liked me, I liked her (probably because she liked me) and the most memorable parts of this summer camp were the evening dances in the Olivet cafeteria, hanging out with this girl (I'll call her "Janine"--not her real name), and her telling me about this band called U2 that her college-age brother hipped her to.

When the camp ended--which had to have been late June--Julie and I maintained contact by writing letters. We must have exchanged letters every week throughout the rest of that summer. Knowing that she liked U2, I bought her some U2 badges that I found at the oft-frequented Camelot Music at Saginaw's Fashion Square Mall. I gave them to her when we met up again in the late summer, and she seemed quite appreciative.

It was likely the autumn of 1985 that I finally decided to investigate U2 myself. I bought Under a Blood Red Sky and a little while later, The Unforgettable Fire. Meanwhile, as all teenage summer romances go, it slowly fizzled out between Janine and I. Distance and senior year of high school took their toll, but the gift of U2 that Janine gave me grew and blossomed.

As I mentioned, Under a Blood Sky, the live EP released in 1983, was my first U2 experience. It's hard to believe now, but at that time U2 seemed mysterious and incredibly foreign to me. A band from Ireland? That seemed so exotic! It's important for me to mention that I didn't have MTV at this point, so I wouldn't have seen U2 there. I also don't recall ever seeing any U2 videos anywhere else, and of course their music was not on the radio in Michigan's Thumb region--certainly not on any radio stations I listened to. The Thumb was a radio desert in the 1980s. There were no college stations nor alternative stations. In fact, I don't think "alternative radio" as a concept was even invented until the 1990s.

To indicate how sheltered I was from a musical standpoint in 1985, Under a Blood Red Sky was probably the rawest record I'd ever heard. Even though nobody would ever classify U2 as punk, it was what I imagined punk to sound like. It was aggressive, political, and unadorned. 

So imagine my surprise when I got my hands on The Unforgettable Fire. Outside of "Pride (In the Name of Love)," which is probably the most conventionally structured and produced song on the album, the album is muted and murky. It sounds like it could have been recorded in the ghostly castle pictured on the record sleeve, and then transmitted via a shaky telephone connection to Island Records headquarters, where it was re-recorded on a few Edison cylinders. To call The Unforgettable Fire "atmospheric" is an understatement.

But it was for those reasons--and the ghostly cover that appeared to have been captured with a daguerreotype or at best an 1890s Kodak brownie camera--that I was quickly obsessed with the album. The opening track, "A Sort of Homecoming," brought the murk in right away and conjured images of a long journey undertaken in a grey, overcast, wintery landscape. 

If I am in a particularly vulnerable state of mind, as I have been quite often recently, "Pride (In the Name of Love)"'s heartfelt salute to Martin Luther King, Jr., with its opening guitar riff that sounds like a clarion call, can still move me to tears--as it did last week when I listened to it one dark morning on the way to work.

The jittery "Wire" is a song I've always liked, but is not one that seems to get much attention. The lyrics might be a bit tossed off, but it's musically propulsive.

The Unforgettable Fire is, of course, not above criticism. There are several songs that are underbaked, like "Promenade" and "Elvis Presley and America" (which couldn't possibly sound any farther removed from the Hillbilly Cat or the United States). These songs coast by on mood, murk, and atmospherics.

The title track ("The Unforgettable Fire") and "Bad" are the two other songs that I still adore to this day. I spent hours trying to transcribe the lyrics to "Bad" (in the days before one could simply look up lyrics online).

Listen, I know that shitting on U2 is particular popular these days, and has probably been popular since the '80s, but I still love this band and don't give a goddamned what anybody else thinks. The Unforgettable Fire, as a moody if flawed listening experience, moves me as much now as it did in 1985.

Election dread

I have been dreading the election for months, and it gets worse and worse as we get closer. Every morning I wake up, after a few minutes of refreshing thought, the dark cloud of the election enters my mind.

There is a good possibility that Trump will win, and I'm trying to mentally prepare for that result. 

Can I be frank? What the hell is wrong with Americans? (Specifically, American voters). How is it possible that this election, if one believes the polls, is THIS close? 

For as long as I live, I will never understand Trump's appeal. Have Americans really become this nihilistic? This cynical? This callous? These are the only reasons I can fathom that explain Trump's continued popularity. It makes me sad about the state of this nation. (Having written this, I'm not naive enough to believe the United States was pure until Trump entered the picture in 2016. Our history is scarred with horrors, and we've had our share of terrible leaders before Trump).

This is just something I had to get off my chest. I've been avoiding writing about politics for many months, but this existential dread has been weighing on me for a long time. I just have avoided directly addressing it until now.

1984 album in review: Ratt -- Out of the Cellar

This is an album I'm sure my handful of readers out there weren't expecting, and in fairness, it wasn't even on my radar until very recently. To go a step further, I have a list of 30 albums from 1984 from which I'm working, and Out of the Cellar isn't on that list.

So, why, you may be asking, am I writing about Out of the Cellar? The reasons are as follows: 

Several years ago, after dropping my older son off at his fencing class, I had the radio on and Ratt's big hit "Round and Round" came on. I was surprised that not only did I know all (or most) of the lyrics, but I was actually enjoying the song.

"Round and Round" came up in a conversation I had and I was happy to learn the person I was talking to also a champion of "Round and Round." Underneath the glam metal dressing, the song is simply a killer pop tune with a catchy chorus. If you hear this song on the radio, it's an immediate earworm.

The third reason I decided to discuss this album is that glam metal was enormous in the '80s, and though I think a lot of it is crap, there are a few albums that have held up (at least to some degree) over the years. Out of the Cellar is one of those records. 

Okay, now here's where I talk about ways in which the album has not aged well. Would you like a side order of misogyny with your serving of shredding guitar solos and pop metal choruses? Comin' right up! "She Wants Money" finds our horndog protagonist bringing home a young hottie only to discover she's a...sex worker, perhaps? Or maybe she's just a "material girl" who is not willing to hook up with this guy unless he has some dough, and as he explains to the listener, he has none. So the girl is gone for greener pastures.

In "Scene of the Crime," our guy arrives at  his girlfriend's house only to discover the "cold-hearted [b-word]" is cheating on him. Needless to say, he is none too thrilled about this development and there is a threat of violence. So, yeah, a bit problematic.

What saves these songs is they are catchy as all get out and one can easily listen to them and enjoy them without paying any attention to the lyrics...but maybe this is only the case if one is a slightly nostalgic Gen Xer and not someone younger. I'm not sure how millennials or Gen Zers would respond to Ratt. I suspect they'd find the music anachronistic.

So I'm talking about feeling nostalgic about this album. The truth is, I didn't like Ratt back in the '80s. I thought they were hopelessly cheesy, though clearly "Round and Round" burrowed into my brain and never left. After the dust has settled forty years later, I have an oddly warm feeling for the era of '80s glam metal and I find this album to be the best and most enduring representation of that musical niche.

The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal

On Friday, I binge-watched the Amazon Prime four-part, four plus hour documentary, The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal. I fully intended on watching maybe just one or two episodes on Friday (the day it dropped), and saving the final two episodes for later...but who was I kidding? I would also like to say I watched all four episodes without getting deeply emotional and tearing up every ten minutes...but--once again--who am I kidding?

I learned a lot about the band that I didn't know, probably because the Hip have been so private over the years. A couple things stand out:

When Gord Downie insisted on being the sole lyricist, the other guys were way more put-out by it than I ever knew. It sounds like it took them a while to get over that. 

The band went through a good decade-plus (roughly 2000-2012) in which they weren't getting along and were close to breaking up. It makes sense that they had rough patches, but as I said, they have always been so guarded that I (and probably others) assumed they always got along just fine.

I had gone through a period recently of not listening to the Hip that often. For whatever reason, I just hadn't been in the mood. This documentary, however, has made me fall in love with the band all over again. I plan on resurrecting my "Hip album review" series which stalled out on Fully Completely. (The Day For Night album is so daunting that I put it off for a long time. Now, however, it's time to tackle it).

I'm also looking forward to the upcoming Tragically Hip coffee table book. I initially balked at the price ($60ish), but after hearing more about it, I think I'll have to add it to my collection.

Let the Hipaissance continue!

Vacation reading: Chris Stein's Under a Rock

One of the best aspects of a relaxing vacation is that I get to catch up on reading. I can't tell you how wonderful it is to read during the daytime in a screened-in porch with Lake Superior as my "front yard." It beats the hell out of not getting to the book until 10 PM after eight hours of work and often falling asleep less than half an hour after cracking the book open.

Weeks ago, I started reading Chris Stein's Under a Rock--his memoir of his life before, during, and after Blondie (the band). It was a book that I'd pick up in the late evenings and almost immediately crash and burn before I made it more than about 15 minutes. I am happy to report that I shot through 184 pages in three days. I read on the porch of this cottage in Copper Harbor and I read on our 7 1/2 hours on the ferry to and from Isle Royale.

The meandering storytelling style was a major part of my inability to get into Chris Stein's memoir. The book could have easily been titled, Everything That Ever Happened to Me in My Life: No Matter How Inconsequential. Another title could have been Crazy Stuff That Happened in New York City: 1965-2023. I'm not sure if Stein had a editor--I assume he did--though I'm not sure what the editor was doing. There are so many stories and anecdotes, some relevant and fascinating, but many others that just don't add much to the narrative. To make matters worse, the chronology is often confusing and muddled.

All that said, Chris Stein is a musician and not necessarily a book writer, so I'll give him a pass. Once I finally had a long and relaxing time to devote to the book, I enjoyed reading it. There was also something funny and perverse reading about illicit escapades in seedy 1970s/1980s New York City while I was in a cottage in the Upper Peninsula feeling the breeze blow in from Lake Superior. It was like existing simultaneously in two disparate worlds.