Rare Songs Done Medium-Well

Well, the songs keep coming, even now as I turn 75. The title for this collection is inspired by an early song, “Cheeseburger Deluxe” (1980), which is rerecorded and included here. And all the songs in this collection are rare, done medium-well.

In the introductions that follow, I describe the songs as dealing with some topic, theme, or experience. But they don’t begin with that kind of intention. They usually begin with some turn-of-phrase that passes through my mind. As I begin to consider possible meanings, implications, and ironies of the phrase, the lyrics take shape. Or sometimes I just start with a first line and see where it takes me. Then I consider what kind of musical vehicle carries the mood that the lyrics express. But I may choose a musical mood that is ironic to the words, seeming to express the opposite, creating an undecidable tension. Irony has been my mode of song-writing since the beginning.

We begin with “Cheeseburger Deluxe” (1980, from The Best of Chronicles of Babylon, included in the Economy Collection on this site, and rerecorded here 2023). This early song ponders my love of cheeseburgers within the context of an increasingly addictive consumer society. The song spun off from listening to Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” from Highway 61 Revisited (1965). But while Dylan’s great song and album presciently describe the end of one world as it was taking place in the mid-1960s, my song anticipates another world closing in on us in the 1980s, a commodity-driven existence within a globalizing economy. The “Joe’s” mentioned in the song was a Greek diner near where I worked in New York at that time. They still serve a really juicy burger! In this rerecording, I couldn’t resist quoting Al Kooper’s classic organ fill from “Like a Rolling Stone.”

“The Sign of Jonah” (2023) is a phrase used by Jesus in the gospels. When he is asked to perform some kind of sign to authenticate his teaching, he replies that they will receive no sign but the sign of Jonah. It is not clear what he means. In the Book of Jonah, Jonah prophesies the Lord’s destruction upon the city of Nineveh. But when the city repents en masse, God spares the city. Then Jonah is furious that God has spared the city and belied his prophecy. “God said to Jonah, ‘Is it good for you to be angry? Jonah answered, ‘Yes, angry enough to die!’” (Jonah 4:9). Each verse of this song begins with a paraphrase of Psalm 2:1 (“Why do the peoples rage?”) The song ponders the relentless cycles of rage and violence that wrack human societies. Musically, it approximates the se genre in Latin music.

Next comes “How Much Does It Mean?” (2023, also added to the Economy Collection). This song explores our increasingly monetized culture, where quantification begins to define everything, substituting for meaning and unique qualities, putting “dollars to sense.”

“All the Way Down” (2023) reflects on my experience as a white male American Christian, and a denizen of the global capitalist system. In collective social terms, all of these identities have some bad history to reckon with. I confess with shame that “my position is an imposition” on people of other identities, even if I have had no such intentions personally. Shame is often a collective experience of identity, usually imposed upon others, but rightfully experienced by the imposer upon reflection. And “this goes all the way down.” But because my Christian faith has been more a matter of personal calling than group identity, I am called and enabled to be something more, something better, a friend and ally across differences. “The army of the Lamb” is comprised of all those who befriend and ally with others in patterns even we don’t know, toward divine purposes beyond our ken (explored earlier in “These United States of Grace” (2017), part of the Man of Irony album). And “this goes all the way down.”

To lighten up a bit, “Who Put the F in Ineffable?” (2023) plays with an old Jewish legend that explains why each of us has that little indentation on the upper lip just below the nose. It is said that the archangel Michael touches his finger on the lips of each baby just before birth, to keep it from divulging the secrets of the universe. Here I switch the “you” from Michael to God and the mystery from the universe to eternity. Musically, the song took form on its own as a light, playful ditty.

“My Alibi” (2023) is a paradoxical claim of both innocence and conviction. Regarding all the news items mentioned in the song, I can honestly say “I was somewhere else.” Yet my alibi is also my conviction, in two senses. As a member of a violent, unjust, and ecocidal society, I am implicated in all the crimes and disasters mentioned. Yet, similarly to “All the Way Down,” I am also in a place where “grace leaves a trace in time and space.” The “I am” is both my alibi and my conviction. (At least that’s my impression of the song, which unfolded without my clear intention.)

“Growing Old Absurd” (2023) takes off from a book by Paul Goodman, Growing up Absurd (1960), where he suggested that various forms of youth rebellion emerging in the latter 1950s were the result of young people unable to fit into an absurd post-war society of consumerism, superficial religion, depersonalizing bureaucracy, and so on. The book helped touch off the more rebellious 1960s. This song takes shape from the other end of the life-cycle, where an elder like myself feels irrelevant and absurd, as techno-capitalist society rages on, “helter-skelter I believe is the word.” This song, like “The Kazoo of Death” from The Last of the Brothers Doug?, confronts those moments when both life and death feel like meaningless defeats, and “to be nihilistic seems only realistic.” Musically, the song was inspired by one of my favorite Rolling Stones songs, “Let It Bleed” (1969). It doesn’t attain quite the ecstatic nihilism the Stones achieved in their twenties. But then, I’m an old man.

“Lost at Last” (2023) is related to the preceding song. I often feel lost in my retirement from the active life. I still enjoy low-budget luxuries of free time and good health. But I feel adrift, “no more future, almost passed.” Maybe I feel lost because I spend time walking stray dogs at a nearby animal shelter. But paradoxically, it also feels like arriving at a destination — “lost at last.” And just at the end, I realize that I’m “lost at last in you.”