Kevin Rowland's "Burn it down", from the Dexys' Young Soul Rebels,
set the torch on the Sex Pistols, the Specials, and all the other
hipster-endorsed bands in 1979. The song began with a spin of radio dials we
now dream about, then ended on Kevin's snarl: "Shut your fuckin' mouth till
you know the truth." Rowland may have feigned contempt for his musical
peers, but not for their majority of fans; he hates trend-riding, uppity
fucking hipsters who use music for status.
After Rebels, Rowland stuck it to his first band, because their
smooth suits caught on with the kids. He fashioned a rootsier pop sound,
then told his bandmates to dress in dungarees. All but one of the original
members could not dress so badly, so they bolted on him, making Too
Rye-Ay the unplanned introduction to a new Dexy's Midnight Runners. The
group's hard-hitting hybrid was so successful, it trashed the Northern Soul
Movement that their debut had quickly popularized.
The deserving smash from Too Rye-Ay was, as we know, "Come on
Eileen". Without it or Big Country's "In a Big Country", it's hard to
believe Bruce Springsteen would have found such a receptive audience for
Born in the USA. Its success indirectly helped to kill the synth craze
of the eighties, and it also made Rowland despise the record. He's an artist
as dissatisfied with the masses -- whose majority will alway consist of
followers, not leaders -- as he is with himself. He'd die for success, though,
because he couldn't live without having a chance to spit on it. And, like so
few indie purists seem to know, you actually have to have fame before you
can truly hate it.
Still, it's not fair to equate Rowland with bands like Blur or Radiohead,
who have shirked past triumphs because (this is my theory) they're
humorless, egotistical pricks. Rowland hates the public, as any good
misanthrope would, but his own love for music puts him among them, as
attested to by his love for Geno Washington and other working-class soul
singers. He likes artists who can excite crowds, and makes them feel more
alive. He takes passion over intellect, simple feelings over abstract
bullshit. Rowland might well hate you and me, but he doesn't hate mainstream
culture. Music gives him joy because it can be direct, simple and pure.
It's safe to say that if you need to go to college to admire the song, then
Rowland's not going to sing it, or write it, or admit it exists. Is he
working class, then? Only if there exists such a thing as a working class
dandy -- someone who'd champion Gustave Flaubert's Dictionary of Accepted
Ideas, or else write it himself. In that book, under the heading of
"musician", Flaubert writes, "The characteristic of a true musician is to
compose no music, to play no instrument, and to despise virtuosos."
Just as Flaubert's Dictionary documented common bourgeoisie prattle
at the time, in order to make fun of the stupid rich, Rowland's choice of covers
for My Beauty must be seen, in part, as a critique of the
laughable historians of popular culture. Not only does he pick an assortment
of heavily mocked songs ("The Greatest Love of All", "This Guy's In Love
With You"), his gushing liner notes kill any suspicion of irony. He says,
"These songs showed me my definition of beauty, my beauty" -- this to songs
like "Daydream Believer". Then he backed his sincerity by singing the hell
out of every track. These covers are fucked until the mic is off the stand,
naked before the listener, making eight minutes of "Rag Doll" end ten
minutes too soon, and "Greatest Love of All" jet forth with a monologue of
degradation that begins, "It's over, it's over, it's over."
When you pair the presentation of Rowland's song choices with the cover art imagery --
Rowland in drag -- listeners can leave with a number of possible
interpretations. When you look at how sad (and affordable) he'd be as a
street prostitute, is the CD a statement on the artist as whore? Perhaps a
whore who gives it away for free? That's possible, but this is a cover
album, so the reverse might be more true: the fan as slut, the music addict
as happy whore. Of course, many other possibilities abound, all of which
make My Beauty an endlessly fascinating statement on sex, culture,
our loves, our hates and the music that wakes us up. It asks why certain
songs get under our skin, and why their artistic expression of our moronic
selves gives us joy. It'll force you to ask what's most important -- the
passion behind a song, or the word-of-mouth accompanying it -- and it'll
make you choose the right answer by moving you, touching you, becoming a
record that matters to you.
At its release, the press reviled this record, because it questioned all the
sophisms that toe-the-line hipsters have thoughtlessly accepted. My
Beauty posed this question most effectively -- "If I sing this song in
my head all my life, isn't there a chance it's actually good?" -- and
answered it logically. To sing gives joy; to have any song stay with you
forever, then, is a joyful thing.
The accompanying liner notes talk about these songs saving Rowland's life,
giving him happiness and taking him from his drug problems. If you buy this
out-of-print CD at Ebay or elsewhere, be sure to get it with the cover art
and these notes, as the music makes less of a statement without them. His
interesting rewordings of a Beatles song ("The Long and Winding Road") might
simply baffle if you do not hear them in an appropriate context. You have to realize
that these covers are not really covers anymore, but Rowland's own songs. By
virtue of having got them stuck in his brain atop other, more painful memories,
Rowland has had years to study these songs -- to dissect them, and to remake
them with his own music.
While the connection between the drag get-up and My Beauty is
intentionally left unclear, it does seem to go beyond saying, "My beauty is
my feminine side." Aside from "You'll Never Walk Alone", Rowland chose songs
written by men that are universal and mostly genderless. Taken separately or
together, they do not make up an easily digestible thesis, like the
Rainmakers' anti-porn songs on Skin, but are filled with colorless phrases, like
"Cheer up", that have a strange, nearly unearned power to possess you after
decades, or just seconds, of being down and out. As evidenced here (and on
the ten CD Freddie Mercury box set), a sublime singer can even make pauses
riveting, and Rowland turns clichés into vivid applause from the heart.
Rowland's beauty goes well
beyond face value (like his voice, charms, passions, intense individuality
and gifts for monologue and melody) to include his aversions -- the contempt
for sophisms, unoriginality, and the status quo -- and his "perversions". I
think of no musician less willing to have a place in someone else's
heart, and for some reason, that's delightful. It is my suspicion that he went
drag in 1999 largely because it wasn't in vogue; he's the type to
wear tights not to further a career, but to ruin it. Whereas Grant Hart daily
gives his soul to music, only to watch it flushed away by a bewilderingly
disinterested public, Rowland does everything possible to avoid the big
payoff. The only thing that thwarts his intentions, and gives him pocket
cash, is one timeless video ("Come on Eileen") and a vocal and melodic
genius that's too good for the world to deny it.
While Mark Kozelek's AC/DC covers were needed to set the stage for bands like the
White Stripes and the Strokes, Rowland's next comeback will probably come
after a tribute album to himself. I hope artists with similar personalities
-- Terry Hall, Mark E Smith, Paul Weller, and Lawrence Heyward -- get involved, as I love them too. I also hope they dress appropriately.
-- Theodore Defosse
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