National Celebrations: National Holiday

Timbuk 3: National Anthem

[purchase]

So let's all sing the national anthem
Free the hostages, pay the ransom
Raise the flag, lower the taxes
Ban the bomb, bury the hatchet...

They stagger the fireworks around these rural parts; we've spent the last few nights hearing pops and crackles out the window late into the dark hours, and we'll hear more, for sure, up to the fourth. Alongside, the deeply American sounds of Bob Seeger and Bruce Springsteen and the rise-and-fall mutter and splash of above-ground pool parties and barbecues drift through the trees, as early weekend warriors anticipate the street fair and parade that will march down Main Street, each fire truck and family farm vehicle, each team and flotilla pausing for just a moment on the cusp like God's own invading army before descending into the madness for their due regard come Wednesday.

One thing you won't likely hear is the less than soothing sounds of Timbuk 3, that mid-eighties band of rabblerousers and politicos who tried to cast a critical lens on the popular only to find its subtext was too deep for the average listener. Though the typical case study is obvious - The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades may be catchy, but to use it for motivation is to totally mistake its pith for optimism - their oft-overlooked and certainly critically undersold back catalog is equally strong.

I've posted several of singer-songwriter Pat MacDonald's cynical compositions here over the last few years, aiming to make my case with persistence, if not comprehensive treatment. But in many ways, National Holiday, which opens 1989 album Edge of Allegiance, is the prototypical Timbuk 3 song: a solid electrobeat over lush acoustic guitars, sparse harmonica, and an undercurrent of tongue-in-cheek synthesizer; a high level of lyrical genericism and broad-brush archetype; so dry, you're not totally sure if it's meant to be ironic right up until the final punchline. Described aptly as both "chipper" and "facetiously optimistic" by critics, it's like a family portrait of our nation: frozen in time, falsely crisp in demeanor; so carefully groomed and spun, the better to fool ourselves in the patriotic mirror.

1988: Sample The Dog

Timbuk 3: Sample The Dog

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I've blogged about Timbuk 3 in more personal terms here before, citing my mid-adolescent self, using the work of these early alternative radio, mostly-acoustic new wavers to mine the story between us, and how we find ourselves in music.

But though other tracks on sophomore album Eden Alley are more radio-ready, and still others more edgy and weird, this is the cut that I spun more than anything that year, out of sheer joy. It's nothing deep or wise or pithy, really - just a typically cynical, self-reflective song about intergenerational dissonance in the emerging cable-TV age, and about sampling, and its ability to resonate the inner workings of the heart, with a surprisingly slow, syrupy undertow that proves just how broad and viable the future of alt electro-acoustic hybrid music would be, released on the cusp of the mass market hip hop emergence. The song, and its accompanying video, are fun, and boingy, and just dark enough to matter; a perfect way to access memory lane, and a perfect sample of what music on the edge of folk, pop, and college alternative was doing in 1988.

Discoveries: A Sinful Life

Timbuk 3: A Sinful Life

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I was in middle school, a loser and a loner; my best friend that year was a kid who lived down the street, a year older and just as socially maladjusted - but his home life was better, so we always went there after school. PJ was into a particular sort of eighties drum-machine-driven echo-harmony new wave music: he introduced me to The Thompson Twins, Everyone But The Girl, and Wang Chung, too, though I seem to remember that Howard Jones was all mine. And when this song and album came to me, it was my first step as an audiophile from mood to songwriting, and one of the first moments in my life that my attention shifted from song-at-a-time to LP and catalog.

Oh, sure, I must have heard The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades on the radio that first year, though truly, I was 13, and my tastes were running more towards even cheesier popsongs that year. But I didn't really discover one-hit wonders Timbuk 3 until their sophomore album, Eden Alley, which PJ brought to my attention when it emerged the following year... and though by then Timbuk 3 was already fading from public view, it was this album that stuck, a perfect collection that held and still holds together track by track, falling into place in my ears somewhere between Suzanne Vega and The Boomtown Rats.

Today, PJ is a reluctant lawyer, playing a couple times a month at a local open mics, hoping ever-after to make it as a musician so he can leave the legal life behind. He's moved on from that suburban house which you can see above, angled to show it as it always looked as I approached it, from my own home from down the street. But his own songwriting echoes those 80s bands more than most folksong, most especially in its quirky intellectualism, polysyllabic meter and rhyme, bittersweet cynical worldview, and tongue-in-cheek, high-metaphoric, commonground concreteness. And hearing Timbuk 3's slower, folkier side, which crops up on this album here and there, is a key indicator of where that sensibility came from.

Oh, and full disclosure: I have a co-write credit on one of the songs on PJ's long-shelved debut album I Know What You're Made Of, which you can check out and purchase here.

Peace on Earth: All I Want for Christmas (Is World Peace)

Timbuk 3: All I Want for Christmas (Is World Peace)

[purchase]

Though the intent of this week's theme is to provide an opportunity for both Holiday music and, more generally, songs of peace and fellowship from the entire musical and seasonal spectrum, I couldn't resist kicking things off with a peace-themed song from Christmases past.

I had a thing for Timbuk 3 in the late eighties, thanks to an equally outcast friend who played synthesizer; my fandom was piqued, in part, by the 1987 release of this perfect 80s geek rock holiday single, and it culminated with the following year's release of Out of Eden, before fading into the pre-grunge era as the decade turned.

Looking back, I find most music from the era both dated and precious, as if a packaged piece of childhood. All I Want for Christmas is a perfect sample: quintessentially late eighties, and particularly Timbuk 3, from lead singer Pat MacDonald's wry, unsubtle political songwriting to the faintly fuzzed-out nasal harmonies in doubled fifths. The lyrics are quite a literal commentary on commercialism as a reflection of war, running down a list of violence-inducing toys in each verse before falling into a somewhat petulant, trancelike repetition of wanting world peace instead.

Like much of the Timbuk 3 / Pat MacDonald canon, in fact, it fits well both lyrically and sonically with follow up to yesterday's post on Jim White, albeit a bit more danceable; fans of Oingo Boingo and Wall of Voodoo will find the song especially pleasing. Meanwhile, those looking for a slightly less dated take on the same sentiment will enjoy this live bootleg bluesy electro-folk 1993 cover from similarly politicized post-folkies Bruce Cockburn and Jackson Browne; it takes a minute to warm up, but it's worth it.

Bruce Cockburn and Jackson Browne: All I Want for Christmas is World Peace

[unreleased; popularly available on Santa's Boots]