Sunday, May 22, 2016

Rocking the Paradise

My wife and I saw Dennis DeYoung tonight at the Wildflower Festival.  At 69 years old, we thought he should change his name to Dennis DeOld (ba-dum-dump!).  Dennis DeYoung was the lead singer of Styx, a rock group that probably took itself a little too seriously in the 1970's and 1980's, but they were talented and wrote a number of great songs, all of which DeYoung is now playing on his tour.



Several of the songs came from Styx's 1981 concept album Paradise Theater.  Paradise Theater was a real theater in Chicago that opened in 1928 and closed in 1958.  The opening song A.D. 1928 depicts the owners' buoyant optimism that greeting the opening of the theater.
Tonight's the night we'll make history, as sure as dogs can fly
And I'll take any risk to tie back the hands of time
And stay with you here all night
So take your seats and don't be late, we need your spirits high
To turn on these theatre lights and brighten the darkest skies
Here at the Paradise....
The Paradise Theater opened in 1928, the year before the Great Depression hit.  The "darkest skies" in the opening stanza are yet to come.  And they start to appear in the next song Rocking the Paradise.  It opens with a populist appeal.
So whatcha doin' tonight?
Have you heard that the world's gone crazy?
Young Americans listen when I say 


There's people puttin' us down
I know they're sayin' that we've gone lazy
To tell you the truth we've all seen better days

Don't need no fast buck lame duck profits for fun
Quick trick plans, take the money and run
We need long term, slow burn, getting it done
And some straight talking, hard working son of a gun.
 That opening line is actually one of the great lines in all rock music "Whatcha doing tonight?  Have you heard that the world's gone crazy?"  I've thought that often as I watch the political process in the US, ISIS in the Middle East and Europe, spiraling debt around the world and on and on.

The populist goes on:
Whatcha doin' tonight?
I got faith in our generation
Let's stick together and futurize our attitudes
I ain't lookin' to fight, but I know with determination
We can challenge the schemers who cheat all the rules
Come on take pride, be wise, spottin' the fools
No more big shots, crackpots bending the rules
A fair shot here for me and for you
Knowing that we can't lose
 Dennis DeYoung, at 69 years old sang those words tonight: "I got faith in our generation".  Of course people singing it today are a completely different generation.  They might wonder if his generation actually did anything useful.  I'm reminded (as a diversion) of another song that came out in the 1980's by Genesis, Land of Illusion.
I won't be coming home tonight
My generation will put it right
We're not just making promises
That we know, we'll never keep.
"My generation will put it right".  The hubris of it all. 

Back to Paradise.  The Paradise Theater was designed for silent films and therefore had horrible acoustics. The Theater opened almost simultaneously with the opening of the Paradise, "talkies" were introduced and the era of silent movies ended.  The miserable acoustics of The Paradise doomed it to second-class status and by the 1950s' it was bankrupt.  The story of a Theater called "Paradise" that was opulent and elegant but doomed to failure was too powerful a metaphor for a socially-conscience band like Styx to pass up and they used the Theater as a metaphor for the changes going on in America in the 1970s and 1980s.

If the beginning of the album depicts optimism at the opening of the Paradise the middle of the album depicts desperation.  One of the middle songs is titled "Nothing Ever Goes as Planned" and indeed it doesn't.  The populist fervor of the opening seems naive and misguided.  We can't focus on enemies ("big shots, crackpots, bending the rules") when we ourselves are flawed.  

Towards the end of the "middle" of the album, there's a little spoken dramatic interlude. Someone is inside the theater playing a saxaphone and his neighbor complains about the noise.
Hey , hey out there knock it off will ya?
Hey give it a rest will ya? I'm tryin' to get some sleep!
Want me to call the cops?
I tell ya Erma I can't till next week when they start to tear that damn old theatre down.
The Paradise is closed at this point.  The idealism that greeting it's opening has been replaced by selfishness and greed.  This is neatly summarized in one the last song Half Penny Two Penny
Half penny, two penny, gold krugerrand
He was exceedingly rich for such a young man
Sad story, old story
Bring out the band
Another divorce just a few hundred grand

Half penny, two penny, back of the queue
Yes mister poor man this means you
Justice for money what can you say
We all know it's the American way
 Styx was from Chicago and they were probably familiar with "Justice for money".  Of course, the song was written in the early 1980s. This was the era of the Yuppie, when "conspicuous consumption" became a topic of discussion and when BMW cars were so ubiquitous that their nickname "Beemer" became an everyday word.

Why do I go through all this?  It was a rock concert after all, and I was more interested in the skill of the guitar player than I was in the moral theme of the music (the guitar player was very good, he looked like and sounded like a young Tommy Shaw). I bring it up because everyone longs for a paradise, and the idea of a broken down paradise is indelible in the popular imagination.  Perhaps "paradise" was some time in your youth. Perhaps it was some era inhabited by your parents or grandparents or ancesters in the old country.  Things suck today, but boy if we only lived then we'd be set!

When we got married, there was another popular song that I'd like to bring up here.  Right Here Right Now by Jesus Jones.
A woman on the radio talks about revolution
When it's already passed her by
Bob Dylan didn't have this to sing about you
You know it feels good to be alive
I was alive and I waited, waited
I was alive and I waited for this
Right here, right now, there is no other place I wanna be
Right here, right now, watching the world wake up from history
The third line sticks with me: when I heard the song I always thought the singer was saying "Bob Dylan didn't have to sing this for you".  Meaning, you don't need your oracle to tell you the obvious: it's good to be alive.

But regardless, Right Here Right Now is more generational hubris.  Who cares what Bob Dylan said in the 1960s?  It's today, man! Yesterday's gone.

(these are all very favorite songs of mine)

I guess my point is that we can't pine for the good old days.  And we can't idolize the present or the perceived future.  We have to learn from the past and take what was good and true and apply it to the problems we have today.  Every era has it's own technological challenges and solutions and it's own cultural clashes. Moral decay from one generation can poison another generation and moral renewal in one generation may not bear fruit until that generation is dead and buried.  Generational pride is a tool of the devil to pit one generation against another. Waiting for the world to "wake up from history" is to wait for the old generation to give up and admit it lost.

Paradise won't be in our grasp until we experience it in Heaven.  Attempts to build paradise on Earth are doomed to failure at best and occasionally lead to war and genocide.   By ourselves we are unable discern what should be kept from a previous generation and what should be handed on to the next.  Pride and competition blinds us to the good and bad that exists in all eras.  The only way to tell what should be preserved and what should be discarded is a moral wisdom that transcends generations.   We can't "wake up from history" we need guidance from the Author of history.  And we need humility to know that we're not the pinnacle of human advancement. We'll get a few things right, but the the older generation will look at us and despair at the future and the younger generation will look at us and despair at the past.

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