Afterthought to the 4th of July
You could not be more removed from Europe than Kansas in the early 70ies, a region whose identity you are born in to, and one nearly impossible to shake. It had after all in the past been the land of John Brown / Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson had sheriffed in Dodge City / Wild Bill Hickock had been the Marshall of Abilene / the plains Indians had once hunted their buffalo on the wide open lands / Laura Ingalls Wilder had grown up there in her little house on the prairie / and Dorothy, along with her truest of companions Toto, had left her black and white home for the colorful world of Oz only to come to the conclusion that there is no place like home.
In the current times the traditional ways of the midwestern lifestyle had been in collision with the antiwar and cultural revolutionary movements of the late 60ies and early 70ies. The following implosion of a brave new world left disillusioned warriors of peace in it’s wake who were being filled with a new interpretation of an age old belief. In the midst of all this my folks had heard the voice of Jesus telling them to go spread the Gospel in a far away heathen haven named Germany and packed my brother and myself up, my younger brother still resting easy in my mother’s womb. We left our little hippie Jesus Freak community in Overland Park, Kansas, when I was just 3. I have been alternating between there and the U.S. ever since.
Now as many an immigrant to the lands of Europe can attest to, you don’t just enter there and are welcomed with open arms / leave your home and identity behind / and become whatever citizen of whose borders you have just entered. You basically stay a foreigner all your life, and the natives go out of their way to remind you of that on a continuous basis. I understood at a very young age what L. Frank Baum meant with we are not in Kansas anymore and learned to cling to my American identity for dear life. If we hadn’t been a nuclear hippie family from the American heartland, the tornado warning sirens still ringing in my ears / my folks hadn’t been half the age of all other parents / all clad in Levi’s and Lee jeans / and all members of this tiny unit with hair to their shoulders sans my mom’s whose hair nearly reached her waist / and we had stayed put in that one place / not moved back and forth between two similar yet completely contrarian cultures, maybe then I would have assimilated and become a German, or more probably a Bavarian. But that was not to be my fate.
I became fluent at a very early age in German and submerged myself fully in their culture, spending weeks and months, sometimes it seemed like years, without communicating in English or speaking with people from my own country. I would get a feeling of total isolation and loneliness, even among my best friends. One of the ways to escape these feelings of seclusion and alienation was with Rock’n’Roll music. Certain songs and genres would grab my heart and mind with a warm embrace of pure Americanism while rendering me helpless to an immense longing for home. I would see the billboards on the endlessly straight highways passing by / smell the smoke of barbecued meat billowing through the air / hear that thundering Harley Davidson passing me by while my car windows shook in their frames / smile back at some random stranger telling me about his or her day without a care in the world about what I might do with this information given to me for no other purpose than that we were alive, in the same place, and had the means of communicating / and watch some hippie girl twirling a kaleidoscope glowing hoolahoop around her hips, with the warmth of the kind wrapping itself around my mind while twin guitar rockets blasted off into space, propelled by the fuel of a perfectly tight rhythm section.
Willie Nelson-American Tune
During all this time one of my heroes had always been Willie Nelson and you don’t get more American than him. He might be from Texas but, much like Johnny Cash, has transformed into an icon that seemingly represents us all. He has a spirit that we all yearn for and transmits values that we all hold dear. Even the most ardent of anti-drug zealot will forgive him his marijuana transgressions and the most anti-country metal head would carry his guitar to the stage for him. Who else could lose it all to the IRS only to have his fans buy all his belongings at an auction and subsequently give it back to him when the smoke blew over. In 1993 he released the album Across the Borderline partially produced by Paul Simon, who in his own right is one of the greatest lyrical voices of the U.S. The record opens with a cover of American Tune, a thought provoking meditation on what it means to be an American, from 1st generation having arrived on the Mayflower to firmly rooted in our collective experience, and garners eloquently the spirit we all wish to exhibit outwards to the rest of the world / transcending all adversity to be there “in the ages most uncertain hours and sing our american tune” / promising to do our best yet knowing all too well we are often prone to fail. Paul Simon said he had written Graceland for Willie Nelson but if you would have asked me which song he had penned with Willie in mind I would have picked this. It seems to fit him like a trusted old pair of Cowboy boots, dusty / and worn to a perfect mold around his foot.
Spirit-America, The Beautiful / The Times They Are A’Changing
Spirit is one of those bands that are nearly impossible to characterize / seemingly existing in their own creative sphere / defying any categorization / Rock’n’Roll for sure / but not any specific genre. And their adventurous 1975 release, Spirit of ‘76, titled in reference to the upcoming bicentennial commemorations, transcends any and all styles of the time. The whole album seems to have a feeling of celebration but the intro track is specifically recorded with the bicentennial in mind and combines America, the Beautiful with Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a’Changing, and, much like American Tune, creates another beautiful meditation on what this country actually means. It makes you aware that nothing in this American experience is ever set in stone, that we are all a part of one long human experiment, with the underlying tone being that of hope and perseverance.
Grateful Dead-U.S. Blues
I really had to laugh while I was trying to find the video to U.S. Blues when I came across this comment: On Flag Day, I wear my Grateful Dead, why because who is more American than them? and that pretty much sums it up for me, too. Are there things, people and places just as American as the Grateful Dead, for sure, but anyone more American? I don’t think so. You might be able to get away with regional comparisons but overall a band like this could never have come to fruition outside these borders. Pure freedom and adventure in everything they do yet oblivious to any trends and expectations. Now there could be numerous Dead songs on here that would characterize the American Spirit but I figured I’d leave it to the most obvious, after all, if you can put Charlie Chan and PT Barnum in the same line your only competition is Bob Dylan, and it don’t get more American than him, either.
Marshall Tucker Band-This Ol’ Cowboy
Marshall Tucker’s catalog is chock full of pure Americana, too, and I don’t mean that in the contemporary musical sense, but in a more holistic culturally all encompassing way. They took the adventurous southern blues rock sounds of the Allman Brothers Band, combined them with the discipline of Lynyrd Skynyrd and added their own jazzy, country spice rub to produce some of the most smoking hot music the American south had to offer. And no other song exemplifies this more than their country swing smash of a song This Ol’ Cowboy. Everytime I hear this tune I can’t help but see dancing couples in bucket sized cowboy hats and perfectly polished boots twirling and swirling through a denim and diamonds honky tonk somewhere in the heart of Texas. Yeehaw!!
OutKast-Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik
Don’t really have a clue what OutKast is talking about in Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik but in the end it doesn’t matter. One thing I learned living in a country / where a lot of people don’t understand the lyrics being sung / is to accept the voices as an instrument, an extension of the melody and, in the case of rap, of the rhythm. I was travelling with 2 German friends through the U.S. and somehow happened into an African-American karaoke event in a club in Memphis. It was one of the most chill, fun and enjoyable evenings of our trip and this song always reminds me of the vibe of that night. The place was packed and everybody was having the time of their lives. I close my eyes and see the people of that evening swaying to the rhythm of this groove.
Railroad Earth-Railroad Earth
I have moved back to the U.S. and have been living here in Florida now since 2016 with no plans of leaving this continent for longer than a vacation. I am happy to be back, but as it is so often in life you tend to create myths and dreams around what you miss, believing things are different than they really are. Reality in the U.S. can often be brutal, and life here never is easy, something so very well described in the beginning lyrics of American Tune. Yet we all have our own picture of this country that we wish were true, one, where our American Dream is alive and well. Few other bands seem to so very well describe this mythical America / that home I left when I was only 3 years old / like Railroad Earth, and listening to their song of the same name often fills me with a feeling of longing and nostalgia that I can’t seem to shake, even after being firmly rooted back in the American way of life, like I have yet to find my home. And listening to it right now I have that uncertain feeling that I might not find this country of my imagination until I die. Of all the songs that used to bring tears to my eyes / when that longing for home got all overpowering / this one still does. Could it really be true that I will never find my way home?
Hope you all enjoyed this little selection. Let me know what you think. What are the songs that bind you up to your home?