ELEGANZA

ELEGANZA

ON THE AIR!

John Mendelssohn

As you read this, you’re feeling guilty because you ought to be finishing up your Mother’s Day shopping. As I write this, though, neither the Penn State Nittany Lions nor the University of Miami Cokesmugglers have even begun butting one another in the genitals with their helmets in preparation for their Fiesta Bowl, uh, battle for the national college football championship. So you’ll understand why I’m still speechless over the McDonalds Marching Band’s having chosen to perform Bruce Springsteen’s "Born In The U.S.A.’’ in yesterday’s Rose Parade.

Before the dawn of recorded history, during my own teens, a weary nation wanted desperately to believe that the Kingsmen’s smash version of "Louie Louie’’ contained at least one verse about extramarital cunnilingus. Later, there were those who believed that Donovan’s "Mellow Yellow’’ contained cryptic instructions on how to get high on the fibrous insides of banana peels. And in 1978, many people believed that Randy Newman’s "Short People" was about its composer’s disdain for the pintsized solely on the basis of their pint-sizedness. But with the McDonald’s band’s addition of the song to its repertoire, there can no longer be any question that "Born In The U.S.A." is the most widely misunderstood song in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.

Yes, it requires one to read a lot between the lines-especially in the chorus, which is essentially just four repetitions of the title phrase—but how could the writing between them be any clearer? What the song conveys—pretty crudely, I’ll grant you—is a particular imagined veteran’s rage at the pain and futility of his life in the America to which he returned after having been capriciously sent to Vietnam “to kill the yellow man.’’ Just the sort of sentiments, in other words, to make one’s chest swell with pride at the sight of Old Glory—and tastebuds and tummy yearn for a box of Chicken McNuggets.

But back to our column. I’m in a record shop in downtown San Francisco in the autumn of 1985 buying a copy of Marshall Crenshaw’s Downtown album to review for this magazine when the salesperson handling the transaction looks up from my MasterCard and asks, “Are you the John M__?” I’m so flattered I could write him a check for whatever I’ve got in my checking account. But I restrain myself, thank him for caring, and discover that he is himself none other than Miles Mellough, the celebrated Fogtown jazz jock.

In my Crenshaw review, a notably poor piece of work, I will neglect to mention that “The Difference Between Me And You” is an extraordinarily fine piece of songwriting, one that every aspiring tunesmith ought to contemplate at some length. And a few months later, when Miles drops his celebrated Fogtown jazz jock personna and moves off the local university station and onto an actual commercial one that pays him more per hour than either you and I make unless you’re Billy Joel, Idol, or Ocean, he suggests that I be a guest on its weekly Critic’s Choice program. He has taken the liberty of proposing the idea to station higher-ups, and they think the idea’s swell.

Months pass. I compile a list of the 89 records that have meant the most to me in my first 67 years as a rock fan. More months pass. They seem to have had everybody within two hours of the Golden Gate Bridge who’s ever written so much as a record review on the show, but my phone doesn’t ring. More months pass. Embarrassed, Miles takes the bull by the horns and gets them to phone me. I’m scheduled for three nights before Christmas.

On the bus I ride four hours back and forth to work each day, I whittle my list down to a dozen records that meet two criteria: (1) I love them, and (2) few of those who’ll listen to the show will have heard them. I jot down bon mots.

The Big Night arrives. Miles kindly accompanies me to the station, pausing every couple of blocks to scribble an autograph for a jazz fan who recognizes his Wolfman Jackish rasp. A Christmas party’s raging at the studio, but the tortellini turns out to be filled with the ground flesh of murdered calves, so what I have for dinner is several little slices of bread with strangely discolored smoked salmon and a couple of capers atop ’em. Yum! Miles introduces me to a succession of station higher-ups whose names I instantly forget. Most of them are flagrantly ignoring the Surgeon General’s warning about the dangers that cigarette smoking poses to the health.

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A few minutes before I’m to go on the air, I ask Miles if I ought not start grabbing the obscure albums from which I want to play cuts. The station advertises itself as San Francisco’s record collection, so I’m expecting to be ushered into an airplane-hangarsized room in which every record ever released is alphabetically arranged in those steel shelves you see in warehouses. Joke’s on me! The station turns out to own about 122 albums—and they include jazz, blues, and folk in addition to rock. Thus, I can forget about playing “Losing You” from the sublime first Dwight Twilley album, “No Pictures of Dad” from the magnificent first Josie Cotton, the / Ching song, whose title I can never remember, from the astpnishing first Pink Floyd. It’s a good thing i brought my own personal copies of Lorraine Ellison’s Stay With Me, The Walker Bros.’ Greatest Hits, and The Small Faces’ The Autumn Stonel Though no record collection is within shouting distance of complete without all three of them, the station has none of them.

I’m ushered into the studio. Hearing the station’s, uh, air personalities wax rhapsodic about Sade, Jennifer Warnes Sings Leonard Cohen, and their sponsors’ products bn the air in tfjpir dulcet and wouldn’t-yougive-everything-you've-ever-owned-for-10minutes-in-the-sack-with-me voices, you imagine them to be wearing Giorgio Armani clothes and to be reclining in a leather easy chair that swept ail of last year’s international design competitions. But the guy who’s just about to finish his show looks like someone you’d find peeing on his own shoes in an alley, and the studio’s dark, squalid, and strewn with overflowing ashtrays. The moment I seat myself, rats the size of Lhasa Apsos begin gnawing on the tips of my shoelaces. track). I hear myself belaboring how bored I’ve been since 11,112 with being known as The Big Kinks Expert. My hostess doesn’t reply, “Well, if you’re so oppressed by the idea of talking about them, then why’d you start the goddamn show with them?” The reason she doesn’t so reply is that she apparently didn’t listen to a word I said. She won’t for the rest of the hour. Miles’ll later inform me that when the ghastly Paul Kantner was her guest a few weeks earlier, she nearly got in his underpants with him.

I introduce Ellison’s “Stay With Me” as my nomination for the single most breathtaking vocal performance in the history of pop. You’d think that my hostess might listen to it after that. But about eight bars into it—long before the part where you can actually hear Lorraine’s heart shattering—she decides, having only about eight left, that she’d better get herself a fresh pack of smokes from the machine down the hall. When she returns, I get sarcastic with her. She doesn’t notice that either. Discombobulated, I neglect to explain my theory of rock criticism being valid only to the extent that it may be entertaining reading, and instead hear myself telling my David Lee Roth story—the one about how, while I was performing with my last group at a Hollywood club 10 years ago, the great man had to be physically restrained from hitting my 105-pound girlfriend for politely suggesting that he not heckle us quite so shrilly.

I introduce The Walker Bros.’ version of Bob Dylan’s “Love Minus Zero” as containing thp (unintentionally) funniest guitar solo ever. My hostess doesn’t listen to that either. Or to Pink Floyd’s “Bike,” in which I note that the attentive listener can hear poor Syd Barrett’s personality disintegrating right before his or her ears. I am reminded of those painful moments in my early childhood when my mother first began taking her eyes off rhe every once in a while. I yearn for a cream pie to toss in her face, but content myself with launching a tirade against Joel Selvin, the San Frahcisco Chronicle’s dreadful rock critic. That wakes her up, and how, for the unspeakable Selyin turns out to have a Saturday night program of his own on the station. My mike’s cut off.

The show begins. Its disc jockey hostess welcomes me in her wouldn’t-you-give-everything-you ’ve-ever-owned-for-10-minutes-inthe-sack-with-me air voice and plays the Kinks’ “I Need You,” a desperate last second choice (if a perfectly wonderful

Leaving the studio, Miles and I find ourselves surrounded by a mob of bloodthirstylooking Ratt and Motley Crue fans in black concert T-shirts. “Which one’s Mendelssohn?’’ the most articulate of them demands, his fist stretching the vinyl of his official studded Motley Crue Shout at the Devil tour fingerless glove.

“Yeah,” one of the other agrees. “Which one?”

“This one,” I say, pointing at Miles, and hurry to catch a bus. Any bus. As this is written, Miles remains in stable condition end Bay Area jazz fans have taken up a collection to hire a professional to crush my kneecaps like a couple of peanut shells in the aisle of whatever stadium it is they’re just about ready to start the Fiesta Bowl in.

But back to our column. If I see even one more beer commercial shot in the style of a rock video and intended to make me believe that to be hip is to drink the unspeakable swill that is the sort of American beer that could afford to produce such a commercial, i am likely to remove a few crucial tubes from the back of my television set and bury them in the middle of our enormous backyard in the dead of a moonless night while drunk.