Woke up, freaked out that his column was due, jump/skipped around the great machine’s wireless radio device using his wee hands to snatch three songs out of the pellucid aether like Homily Clock from “The Borrowers”, and then used a lot of NYT words to sledgehammer them into Bobo’s Grand Unifying Theory of Culture, Politics, Magnetism, "Mawage", Spin-The-Bottle, Straussianism, and Why Women Who Laugh at Me Are Really Just Morally Deformed.
The Theory, from his column “The New Lone Rangers”, from three song lyrics, and a lotta happytalk about Facebook and cell-phones, Bobo posits a New Female Ideal:
"If you put the songs together, you see they’re about the same sort of character: a character who would have been socially unacceptable in a megahit pop song 10, let alone 30 years ago.The songs are…
"This character is hard-boiled, foul-mouthed, fedup, emotionally self-sufficient and unforgiving. She’s like one of those battle-hardened combat vets, who’s had the sentimentality beaten out of her and who no longer has time for romance or etiquette. She’s disgusted by male idiots and contemptuous of the feminine flirts who cater to them."
…about a woman who has contempt for the man cheating on her.
…about a woman who is getting drunk and telling the losers who hit on her to fuck off.
… about a woman who tells a man to dump his girlfriend for her.
Which is derived from…
"This character is obviously a product of the cold-eyed age of divorce and hookups. It’s also a product of the free-floating anger that’s part of the climate this decade."Except, of course, there is a whole genre of music that features triflin’ men who done her wrong and how she’s gonna make him pay, and hard-drinkin', seducin’ women who tell you to leave your plain jane for the wild delights of her bed.
It's call the Blues.
Kinda surprised you haven't heard of it.
Been around a century? One of our most cherished American art forms? Revered around the world? Sired everything from punk to glam to speedmetal?
When you were a beat reporter in Chicago, had you been listening to anything other than Up With People and the Siren's Song of Ronald Reagan, you would have heard it everywhere.
But since you are unfamiliar, the following is just a quick sampling of its offerings.
Bobo, this Ethel Waters in 1928 on why a weak man is no kinda man at all
“Get Up Off Your Knees”Ethel Waters again and the classic “There'll Be Some Changes Made” in 1921.
A trifling man came home one night
And tiptoed to his door
To his despair, his little wifie was there
Waitin' to lay down the law
Said she, "I'm thru, I'm really sick of you
Get out, stay out, and be on your way"
Well he dropped down on his knees
Cried "oh, please",
But this is all she had to say:
Get up, get up, off your knees papa
You can't win me back that way
Turn in, turn in all your keys papa
You really goin' this time to stay
I discovered that you're the worst man in this town
Looks like you're fond of keepin' on going lower down
Get up, get up, off your knees papa
You can't win me back that way
Get right up off your knees papa
I'm tellin' you, you can't win me back that way
Turn in all your keys papa
Cause I put you out this time to stay
You're so blamed crooked, here are blades
Looks like it's a hard matter for you to keep your head up straight
So get up off your knees papa
You can't win me back that way
...
They say don't change the old for the newBobo, meet Billie Holliday…
But I found out that this will never do
When you grow old, you don't last long
You're just here my honey, then you're gone
I loved a man for many years gone by
I thought his love for me would never die
He made a chance and said I would not do
For now I'm gonna make some changes too
Why there's a change in the weather, there's a change in the sea
So from now on there'll be a change in me
My walk will be different, my talk and my name
Nothing about me's goin' be the same
I'm gonna change my long tall one for a little short fat
I'm gonna change my number where I'm livin' at
Because nobody wants you when you're old and gray
There'll be some changes made today
There'll be some changes made
Why there's a change in the weather, there's a change in the sea
So from now on there'll be a change in me
Why my walk will be different, my talk and my name
Nothing about me gonna be the same
…on a dead romance:
“A Fine Romance”… on self-reliance:
A fine romance, with no kisses
A fine romance, my friend this is
We should be like a couple of hot tomatoes
But youre as cold as yesterdays mashed potatoes
A fine romance, you wont nestle
A fine romance, you wont wrestle
I might as well play bridge
With my old maid aunt
I havent got a chance
This is a fine romance
“God Bless the Child”Meet Merline Johnson's, singing about being out and getting hammered in 1947 --
…
Them thats got shall get
Them thats not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, papa may have
But God bless the child thats got his own
Thats got his own
Yes, the strong gets more
While the weak ones fade
Empty pockets dont ever make the grade
Mama may have, papa may have
But God bless the child thats got his own
Thats got his own
“Bad Whiskey Blues”Bobo, this is Martha Copeland, laying down the law in the 1930s (?)
I drink so much whiskey, I stagger home in my sleep
I drink so much whiskey, I stagger home in my sleep
Well soon every morning, I'm staggerin' up and down the street
If I can't get no whiskey, give me some gin or good wine
The way I keep on worryin', I stay drunk all the time
I drink so much whiskey, I stagger home in my sleep
Well soon every morning, I'm staggerin' up and down the street
“I Ain't Your Hen, Mr. Fly Rooster”Bobo, this is Cleo Gibson, advertising her fine wares. also in the 1930s
Cat, keep away from my shack
Cat, don't you ever come back
Never no hug, and never no kiss
Forever more remember this:
I ain't your hen, mister fly rooster
So don't crow in my back yard
Here's one chicken you ain't peckin'
The day you try you'll find it hard
When you hear me cackle don't you stop and snatch
Cause your kind of chickens that will never hatch
I ain't your hen, mister fly rooster
So don't crow in my back yard
…
I've Got Ford Engine Movements In My HipsBobo, this is Blondie (not the Blues, but a direct, lineal descendant), from damn near 30 years ago,
…
I got Ford engine movements in my hips,
Ten thousand miles guarantee
A Ford is a car everybody wants to ride
Jump in, you will see
You can all have a Rolls Royce
A Packard and such
Take a Ford engine boys
To do your stuff
I've got Ford engine movements in my hips,
Ten thousand miles guarantee
I say ten thousand miles guarantee
…
on the subject casual infidelity and why eventually you’ll call her.
And this is Blondie, on the topic about stalking her target and getting him
One way or another
This, Bobo, is Ms. Aretha Franklin
singing about “Respect”.
There are dozens -- probably hundreds -- more, because women singing on these subjects -- cheating, lying, fucking, fucking around, being cold-hearted -- is nothing new or revelatory.
Because these things have been a part of the human condition forever.
However is has only been in the last generation or so that the average woman has been able been able to work to support herself, own property, make her own decisions, free herself from a disaster of a marriage, have children or not, raise them alone if necessary, without the weight of the entire culture landing on her back with both feet.
And with equality fitfully on the march everywhere, it has only been in the last generation or so that women have managed to pry themselves onto the pop charts in any numbers singing like anything other than the Ronettes.
So finally, Bobo, this a dollar featuring Ms. Susan B. Anthony
With which you can go and buy yourself a clue.
27 comments:
Cut the fella some slack, it's really easy to misplace an entire genre of music ;¬)
OMG, priceless ending with the Susan B. Anthony dollar.
Which always made me wonder... was it just a coincidence the dollar coin failed? The first money with a woman on it? And the treasury people "didn't realize" it would be mistaken for a quarter and now only dwells in machines in Manhattan.
Just an inquiring mind...
It looks like the newest dollar coins (featuring the presidents, all male so far, if my memory is correct) is failing miserably as well. We Murkans don't do $ coins.
Pablo
The Blues, talk of whiskey and Ford engines, a smackdown of Bobo- all in one post! This is why we say:
Read driftglass First!
How in the holy jumping frog does this slag heap of a human merit column inches in the paper of record? The whole times opinion pages has nothing but corporate appologist with 1 exception, P. Klugman. It's a sorry state indeed.
GuyTheGuy
Pablo,
Murricans will never use dollar coins until the treasury stops printing paper $s.
GuyTheGuy
How the.. whu.. I.. I just can't.. I can not get how someone can be this fucking stupid?! Where the fuck has this fucking fucknozzle been bubbled up for the past four decades? How the fuck does a national rag publish the pseudo pop-psychobabble of an Apple-Tini sipping 46 year old virgin?
Beautiful DG, just a perfectly gorgeous rebuttal. Sisters are doing it, have been doing it, and will be doing it for themselves for a long time to come. PS- Can we stick Bobo and Amy Winehouse in a locked closet together? Not sure what she'd do to him, but Bobsy would never write like that again, fer surely.
Still, I'm stupified at the stultifying wankery that is Bobo'z prose. It's like he's gone full blown Andy Rooney. It's grating just to know someone out there even thinks this way. Arg!
Oh - and one more for the list: Bessie Smith's "Gimme a pig foot, and a bottle of beer.."
stat
clearly, mr. brooks wouldn't count most of your examples on accounta they're not really representative of real women on accounta they're mostly black women. dinah shore singing "my mother done told me" maybe.
You'd think Bobo at least would be familiar with a song Rosemary Clooney sang in "White Christmas" back in 1954, Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me:
My one love affair didn't get anywhere from the start
To send me a Joe who had winter and snow in his heart...
Wasn't smart.
Love, you didn't do right by me...
As they say in the song,
You done me wrong.
Her character left the male alleged-skunk in question because she thought he was playing a nasty con on someone she respected and cared about. She was distraught enough to go on National Television and sing about it (although too polite to mention the guy's name...).
That was during that "glorious" time all Repugs seem to wax fondly about, the Eisenhower years.
And for kicks, should we talk about "Frankie and Johnny", first published in 1904?
BOBO. IS. SUCH. A. PUTZ!
And a MAJOR ignoramus.
Bobo, stick to being stupid about politics. It's what you're best at....
That sort of story and sentiment is also a mainstay of country music.
(I bring up country, the blues and hip-hop when arguing against people who argue against condom education. My line: "Well, you must be from some planet where people never lie to their lovers, or get fooled by lovers' lies. On THIS planet, that sort of thing fuels many major genres of music.")
DAMN....
of ALL the newspapers
in ALL the WORLD
WHY does
this CLUELESS
HAM HANDED HACK
have to 'write'
for mine?
DAMN...
there's always madame butterfly.
how about John Lennon's - I Didn't Mean To Hurt You -- "disgusted" by his own "male idiocy."
It would follow that if Bobo was so wrong about Iraq, he's dumb enough to swallow anything about anything.
This is SO 'Henry Block', to even write but...
"This is reason 69 why I stopped reading the NYT in 1980, when I was 16."
It's no surprise that dumbfuck yuppies like Bobo have never heard, much less even heard OF, the Blues. It's too old, it's too depressing and it's too black for happy-talking-happy-talk happy people like those well scrubbed Dial soaper, Yupper West-Siders like Bobo. Schlemiels like him listen to top 40 or Sports Talk radio when Limpbeaux isn't on the squawk box. Y'really think well-off, white, well connected and boring old fools like him, would ever turn the dial down below 92 and listen to some college radio? Where such music is still played? Not likely, no it isn't.
It's a shame Bobo couldn't be handcuffed to Keith Richards for an afternoon...
Of course Bobo missed "the blues" -- you're talking about Race Records!
You must understand that Bobo is completely unfamiliar with the Negro milieu . . .
NOBODY should help Bobo get a clue! You see, Bobo is an anticlue. If an anticlue encounters a clue, given the size of the anticlue who is Bobo, the resulting clue/anticlue annihilation might blast half the atmosphere off the Earth.
Although at least that would rip apart any corpuscle-sucking cloud creatures in the vicinity... :)
Live long and prosper, IBW
Koko Taylor, Old School 2007, track 5:
You Ain’t Worth A Good Woman
If he worked in Chicago and never heard of the blues he clearly never went south of Harrison, let alone to Bronzeville or even Maxwell Street (which we underinformed South Siders used to refer politically incorrectly as "Jewtown". No offense to anyone meant).
Anyway, I wonder what his deputy op-ed editor, Carla-Anne Robbins--or for that matter fellow columnists Bob Herbert and Maureen Dowd--said or wrote when they saw that.
Adam_Y,
Yeah. Details, details. Its not like his profession demands even minimal research, fidelity to the facts and such.
WereBear/ Pablo
All I know is it’s a bitch to roll around in coins going “Bwahahaha.” Which is why I’ll never switch.
US Blues ,
You sir are, as always, too kind.
GuyTheGuy,
“Krugman”, Although re “Klugman” it would be kinda funny to cast them as Odd Couple. And after three episodes, Felix Brooks gets dropped out the window.
Skunqesh,
Blues women rool. And, yeah, what you said. It beggars the imagination. At some party somewhere someone I’m sure as asked of the publisher, “Why do you keep that human Handi Wipe on staff?” I would pay a stack of Susan B’s as high as a T-rex’s crotch for the answer to that question.
DeeLuzon,
If it ain’t white and on Pop 40 it does not exist.
Anonymous,
Nah. I figure the name “Clooney” probably triggers all kindsa Oedipal/Manchurian programming crap in Bobo’s hindbrain that washes out everything else in white noise.
just john,
Exactly so.
eddie blake,
Play it Sam.
the choir,
There are a goodly number of male-counterpart songs and this is a good example, but for the purpose of rebutting Bobo I just wanted to stick to female-only.
L.S./M.F.T said...
”It's a shame Bobo couldn't be handcuffed to Keith Richards for an afternoon...
Ok, for that I’d pay two stacks of Susan B’s as high as a T-rex’s crotch.
Michael,
He got his break in Chicago. Missing the Blues in Chicago is…is…there are no words.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker,
Aunty Clue would make an awful name for a garage band, but a great name for a nice lady who brings a garage band cookies and beer between sets.
redoubt,
Heard Koko on the radio on the way home tonight. It was “ahhhhh”.
And if I were Carla-Anne Robbins, Bob Herbert or Maureen Dowd, I’d be in the publishers office demanding hookers, 70 year old scotch by the case, an apology and a fat fucking raise,
Actually, "Choir" aren't you talkin' about "Jealous Guy," the Lennon song which features the lyric
"I didn't mean to hurt you,
I'm sorry that I made you cry
I didn't want to hurt you
I'm just a jealous guy?"
I can't add much to what's already been said, except that it must be such a comfort to know that if you're ever stuck for a column idea, there's always Brooks.
Mr. Brooks, meet Kitty Wells. As Just John said, country music deals in a lot of the same subject matter. Of course, country is a descendant of the blues as well, so maybe...
l.s./m.f.t., BoBo wouldn't be caught dead listening to Top 40. He's listening to whatever station uses the tagline "playin' the greatest hits of the '70s and '80s."
And if there is a lot of "free floating anger" in the culture, perhaps BoBo should look around and see which political movement has spent the last thirty years fomenting rage.
It's clearly a competition to see who can be worse, Bobo or Captain Obvious (aka Thomas L. Friedman). What jokers like these do to deserve their gigs as columnists at all is beyond me.
I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair
I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair
...
BOBO on Nellie:
"This character is obviously a product of the warm-water age of attacks on dandruff and flat hair. It’s also a product of the free-floating anger that’s part of the climate this decade."
Bobo continues: Nellie is quite obviously using a strong anti-male metaphor, equating shampoo with the scalping of men. For no greater fault than dull and fishy eyes, South Pacific advocates rubbing out men. It is a horrifying testament to the times and the bitter, ugly and atonal reverberations have continued to destroy every fiber of our society:
Nellie and Girls:
If his eyes get dull and fishy,
When you look for glints and gleams,
Waste no time,
Make a switch,
Drop him in the nearest ditch!
Rub him out of the roll call,
And drum him out of your dreams
Oho! Oho!
Are he and Thomas Friedman awarding each other soixante-neuf "Freedom-From-Cognition" medals?
I'm only asking because I refuse to jump through the NYTimes' little corpo-registration hoop.
Now that they have metaphorically retreated to the green zone of warpimp punditry, can they escape the mortars being lobbed in by Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe, etc.? :0)
"Yo! Thomas! Bobo! You assholes get in that kevlar. Those repub rounds will kill you dead as a mackeral."
Will Friedman grace the Gray Lady's pages with a sage, in-the-know, piece about the republican members of the species RATTUS NORWEGICUS crew ONLY scrambling for the gangplank to catch a little "liberty" before returning to ship to resume the good fight?
And, there's the old Memphis Bluesman, Furry Lewis' FINE version of "Casey Jones"; where a lady is trying to convince Casey to let her "ride his train":
"I aint good lookin'
but I takes my time...
I'm a ramblin' woman
with a ramblin' mind."
:o)
Nice touch with the Susan B. Anthony dollar, D.
...not to mention every note Dinah Washington ever sang. Poor Bobo. Don't you want to mail him a box of 'Nilla Wafers?
And then of course there's "Big Mama" Thornton's original version of Hound Dog (which makes a hell of a lot more sense, as a woman singing about a man).
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