Sweet Sixteen Action: (14) LOW vs (2) CONCRETE BLONDE

FINAL SCORE: (14) LOW 73, (2) Concrete Blonde (64)

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(14) Low, "Words"

Analysis by Kenneth Caldwell

I'm prone on the living room floor, listening to Low's “Words” for the umpteenth time, debating whether to call the paramedics again. Do I want to stay overnight in ER and wait ten hours for results, hearing the screams in trauma? Someone saying, “Come back, child?” No—I've been through this. Every time, “It's not life-threatening. Nothing structural.” So, why am I getting leveled? Damn it. It's bad this time.

Keep calm and focus on the idiot box. Adam Levine’s slick new haircut. I’ll bet he’s saying something profound. Mute is television's best feature. How many words is too many words for closed captioning to keep up? Who gets paid to type this colloquial catastrophe? My chest is pounding. “Man in the box wants to burn my soul.”

I'm prone on the floor hearing Low harmonize all the way from Duluth, the song somehow oscillating between a drunken swirl and stone-faced sobriety. It must be frigid there. Like in Michigan when it's too cold to snow, or the way nostrils freeze first. But this bass line lends some warmth. It's Carhartt wool & North Face fleece.

Here’s a fun anecdote: Chest pressure can signify fatal, time-sensitive horror, or nothing at all. Something trivial. “The pain is easy.”

My hands are soaked. From an evolutionary standpoint, perspiration is an advantage. In fight or flight mode—say, running from a snarling grizzly—moist hands mean better grip on the tree used to escape. But there is no bear. There is only snare and cymbal. I'm prone on the living room floor, counting sizzles on the ride: “4-7-8,” like they told me. Breathe. “But I know they're gonna make it just one more night.”

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The emergency responder barrels in. I say, my hands are tingling. “Is that the truth?” he says. Tiny lightning is combing my veins. He looks confused. Gives me an EKG. I’m breathing fast, he says, standing over me. I’m clutching his pant leg like he’s the father I lost in October. “We’re gonna take him in, just in case.” I ask my wife to get my joggers and that gives him a little chuckle. He mutters something like, “Yoggers.” Who is this guy?

Lucky me: He rides along in the back of the ambulance. One thing they don’t tell you about ambulances—the halogen is resplendent. Can’t fake anything under that light. He’s talking to me as he measures my vitals, says his brother had to stop drinking Monster. Made him feel the same way. Shit, I think. I’m not your bro—not some juiced up meat-monger whose truck says “Super Duty” on the tailgate. He talks the whole way, about his last job or something. “Too many words, too many words.” All the while I’m collapsing into the gurney, letting the clean white linen smother me into some new galaxy sans Adam Levine. Also, I’m wondering how I left my shoes at home. They let me aboard in just Carhartt socks. Anything goes in this clown car.

Later, after the rigmarole of all-night clinical tests and vague explanations, I get a sick note at 4 a.m. that is impressively concise. Doctors don’t play around: “Please excuse Kenneth from work today, as he was seen in the ED overnight.” Talk about understatement. Bitch, I was dying.

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But that was last time. I’m not doing it again. Maybe my heartrate is back to normal now. “And I'm tired.” Beyond tired. And again the lights are all fading back into view, an array of golden beacons smeared across an empty shoreline. The light is resplendent and I’m holding my head. I'm thinking of too many words. How many mantras is too many mantras?

I’m prone listening to “Words,” and it is a song about language. It is plaintive. It is contemplative. This always happens—some rouge nerve whispering in my ear: “Time to faint, fat boy.” I'm not going to listen anymore. “And I can hear 'em.”

“9-1-1. What's your emergency?”

“Hey, I’m not sure. Never mind.” Click.

Beat, busted heart. Stammer in my chest. Just one more night.

Kenneth Caldwell is eyes wide into the night, illuminated in electric blue.

(You may also download a prettier, designed version of the essay here.)

vs.

(2) Concrete Blonde, “Joey”

Analysis by Megan Campbell

Concrete Blonde’s Bloodletting came out in 1990, but it didn’t make its way to me until 1991, when I was 16 years old. It was the first “alternative” album I ever owned, except maybe for Red, Hot, and Blue, which I bought because I happened to see a still of Sinead O’Connor in her video for “You Do Something to Me”—she was dolled up with make-up and a wig, and looked unrecognizable (I remember showing the picture to my friend April, who sneered, “That’s not her.” My teenage self was fascinated by this dichotomy. Why look like that (bald and weird) when you could look like this (lacquered and gorgeous)? Which is actually a good thing for a 16 year-old girl to ponder, but I digress). I’m compelled to remind my youngers that, at the time, it was hard to find good music—there was no internet, no satellite radio, no Spotify, no cable music stations, and only one MTV. Even CDs were new-ish. Music meant Top 40 radio and Musicland at the mall; figuring out there was a world of sound outside of those suburban walls was, in retrospect, a rite of passage that not everyone managed to find their way through (eight years later I knew someone who had only ever owned one CD: Roxette). I wish I could remember how I found “Joey,” but find it I did, and it now represents that particular time for me.

I was not alone in my discovery—everyone seemed to love “Joey.” The video broke out of the 120 Minutes ghetto on MTV and achieved regular rotation, and the song even cracked the Top 40, topping out at #19 (it was #1 for four weeks on something called the “Modern Rock” chart). Considering all of the mild, poppy alt bands floating around in the late 80s and early 90s, “Joey” was an unlikely crossover hit. Lots of people love sad songs (and March Sadness thanks God for that) but “Joey” wasn’t, shall we say, attractively sad—it wasn’t winsome or sexy or sweet. The video featured no cleavage and no pretty girl tears—just lead singer Johnette Napolitano looking fierce and unapproachable (she’s still there in my head with bald Sinead), backed by a band that was not good-looking or hip or even youthful. “Joey” was guttural and depressing and pleading. It was without ego or posturing, which I’ve come to feel is necessary for a truly sad song. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was also autobiographical—about Napolitano’s relationship with Marc Moreland of Wall of Voodoo, who died of liver failure about 10 years later (whatever your criteria, this is a bona fide Sad Song).

In 1991 “Joey” felt like it was aimed right at my wounded teen soul. Yet when I listen to it now, it feels like a song for adults who have seen some shit, not kids playing at broken hearts. I wasn’t even a lovelorn sort of teen, more of a morbid one (I remember removing the piece of heat-reflective cardboard from the crawl space entrance in my parents’ basement after I read The Bell Jar. I peered inside and wondered: would they find me? Hmm). A cynical part of me thinks, this song is about giving and giving, and teens are about taking and taking. So of course they (and I) loved it. But when I think a little more about teens, their personalities buoyed up by their favorite store at the mall, their favorite pizza topping, and so many other irrelevancies, I get it—giving someone everything feels possible at 16, because there’s not that much to give. But for an adult, it’s an impossible, desperate, last-ditch promise, which is why “Joey” stings so much.

Wikipedia tells me that “Joey” was the last song recorded for Bloodletting—Napolitano wrote it but didn’t want to sing it. But, eventually, she had to. And it became the single. And it was a hit, an unheard-of thing for a band like Concrete Blonde in 1990. So, she must have heard it everywhere, and also had to sing it everywhere, maybe thousands of times, for fans who were sodden with whatever sadness the song represented for them. And I would love to know what her sadness was like. Was it a punch to the gut every time she sang, or did it fade away over time? Neither feels like a happy ending.

Megan Campbell is a member of the March Sadness Selection Committee and a vintage clothing dealer in Tucson, AZ.

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