A Career in Porn

[Jeeze, could that Steve Irwin post down there get a little staler? Sorry about that, folks. Got a weird mental thing going, something somewhere between writer's block and performance anxiety, a self-feeding cycle where I'd sit down to try and pooch something out and... Nothing. And, o'course, the next time I'd try to write something, it just got worse. Don't worry, honey, it happens to all men...]

Early a couple of mornings ago, Wonder Woman greeted me with the not particularly earth-shattering news that Yusuf Islam, somewhat better known as Cat Stevens, had returned to the World of Illusion and was set to release a new album of pop music in November on Atlantic Records. She skipped away and put "Tea for the Tillerman" on the Victrola and went about her morning routine humming along in a transport of cheerful nostalgia.

I've found that as I've aged I've become more tolerant of music I once frankly detested. As I feel myself becoming further and further detached from the dreadful mechanical goo that oozes out from radio and television and movies these days, I welcome Old-Fart-Hood with open arms. I haven't quite reached the point of waving my cane angrily from my gout-stool at the stereo and pontificating about the Good Old Days, but the moment is not far off.

(Still can't be in the same room as Wondie's idol James Taylor, though. Blecch!)

My reaction to her spinning of a Cat Stevens chestnut was fairly typical of my musical mindset these days. Where once Punk-Boy Neddie heard calculation and formula and that stupid and lazy pop mysticism that made the Seventies such an unbearable moment, now I find my cynicism gone, and I simply enjoy his ability to write and execute an evocative melody. Cat had, I'm now free to admit, a way with minor keys -- "Sad Lisa," for example, is nothing short of gorgeous, all that beautiful shifting between between E minor and its relative major G. The song employs archetypal harmonic progressions that wouldn't be out of place in an eighteenth-century Anglican hymn, but that are given new life by the lovely and constantly surprising melody, which is summed up with truly deft simplicity in the harmonic-minor chorus, "Lisa-Lisa, sad Lisa-Lisa." If you want an illustration of the ancient musical principle that minor keys sound "sad" while major keys are "happy," and how a good songwriter uses that fundamental psychoacoustic truism to manipulate his audience's emotions, I'd point you right to "Sad Lisa."

Yes, my toleration surprises me. I'm so forgiving these days. I find myself asking the question, Am I forgiving Cat Stevens, or should he be forgiving me? Of course, he's got plenty of other things to answer for ("Morning Has Broken" and the Salman Rushdie fatwa come to mind), but when it comes to chords and tunes and how they fit together, beef no longer stands between us. Did you know that the Cheryl Crow -- and Rod Stewart and P. P. Arnold -- megahit "The First Cut Is the Deepest" was written by Cat/Yusuf? Well, you do now.

At any rate, I'm going to be fascinated to listen to the new album. Foremost in my mind will be the question, What does 28 years of Islam do to a guy's melodic sense?

By fascinating coincidence, on the same day that Wondie made her discovery about Yusuf Islam's new album, I came across "Harold and Maude" on the Sundance Channel, and I watched the whole quirky thing, humming along to Stevens' prominently featured songs, even grabbing my guitar to dope out the chords to "Where Do the Children Play?" It was, in short, a Cat Stevens kind of day.

Which, I suppose, leads to the question, "What kind of day is it when you watch 'Jesus Christ Superstar' from end to end?" which I did the following night. This sudden two-day immersion in Seventies pop crap led to the following observations:

1. Jesus Christ was, apparently, a bit of a butthole.
2. I'd hit the 1973-vintage Yvonne Elliman like Barry Bonds on a hanging curveball.
3. Like Jesus, Andrew Lloyd Weber is a bit of a butthole.
4. The sound-production of the movie is a knee-slapper, with this itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny little Full Rock Orchestra barely audible on the soundtrack under stentorian singers. I know they wanted Tim Rice's immortal lyrics to stand out, but this was truly ridiculous.
5. If they're planning to bring back the Seventies in any form, I want you please to take me out behind the barn and put a merciful bullet through my head.
6. The actor who played Peter went on to a career in porn.