A week ago I was on call in the hospital. Nothing much was going on so I flipped on the television (you remember, the one that was stuck on the SciFi channel) and suddenly felt like a very old man.
A little background: When I was eleven years old, my favorite band was the Violent Femmes. My older brother had some of their songs, and everything I knew about pop music I learned from listening to his ghetto blaster through the thin walls of our adjacent rooms. I'm not sure that he was such a huge Femmes fan, but their music had a huge appeal for me. Their tunes were catchy and their lyrics were full of the kind of sweaty and desperate yearnings that already ran constantly through my head. I saved my pennies and bought their self-titled tape at Sound Station 7, the record store in our mall (just talking about an independent record store is an indication of how elderly I am). I soon had all their albums and two Violent Femmes t-shirts, which I would wear to school as often as three times per week, which did little for my popularity in the jock-ocracy of Brookings Middle School. When my friend Nate moved to town, I force-fed him Femmes until he came to accept them (He, in turn, exposed me to the desperate yearnings of The Smiths. In retrospect, I got much the better deal.) and on the rare occasions one of the Femmes' songs was played at a school dance, we rushed out to the floor and cleared a wide area in which to effectively spaz out.
So, I don't listen to the Femmes much any more, but when I turned on the TV I immediately recognized the guitar line from their biggest hit, "Blister in the Sun." I instinctively smiled, then grimaced. The music was providing the jingle for Wendy's new Steakhouse Double Melt, (which, if you manage to surmount it's half-pound magnificence, provides you with 740 calories and 40% of your USRDA of iron). Suddenly my back twinged and I squinted at the television as my vision blurred. I heard several quiet tic-tac-tics as most of my teeth fell out from my rapidly receding gums and bounced across the tile floor. The voice describing the virtues of the Steakhouse Double Melt became muffled as great tufts of slate-grey hair sprouted from my ears. Many elderly people make wistful comments like "I don't know where the years went," or "I woke up one day and suddenly I was an old man." I know just how they feel- one second I was a hearty 29-year-old man, the next, a creaking, hoary old goat, my youth sold down the river.
Perhaps I exaggerate a little, but it was a real shock, almost a visceral blow to hear the anthem of my adolescence appropriated to sell mammoth fast food sandwiches. This was worse than realizing that the original Star Wars movies weren't that good, worse even than having U2 described as Classic Rock. I felt old because this let down gave me the sort of hollow feeling that I associate with people whose cultural foundation has passed from the status of art to commerce. I felt like an aged hippy, uselessly gnashing my few remaining teeth at the vagaries of our consumerist culture.
A very short internet search found a column by Andy Tarnoff, cofounder of and writer for OnMilwaukee.com (the Femmes' got their start in the brief 80s Milwaukee renaissance), in which he publishes this message from Femmes' bassist Brian Ritchie (Gordon Gano is the Femmes' lead singer):
For the fans who rightfully are complaining about the Wendy's burger advertisement
featuring Blister in the Sun, Gordon Gano is the publisher of the song and Warners is the record company. When they agree to use it there's nothing the rest of the band can do about it, because we don't own the song or the recording. That's showbiz. Therefore when you see dubious or in this case disgusting uses of our music you can thank the greed, insensitivity and poor taste of Gordon Gano, it is his karma that he lost his songwriting ability many years ago, probably due to his own lack of self-respect as his willingness to prostitute our songs demonstrates. Neither Gordon (vegetarian) nor me (gourmet) eat garbage like Wendy's burgers. I can't endorse them because I disagree with corporate food on culinary, political, health, economic and environmental grounds. However I see my life's work trivialized at the hands of my business partner over and over again, although I have raised my objections numerous times. As disgusted as you are I am more so.
As Mr. Tarnoff points out, the Violent Femmes are still touring (their next stop is the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, CT, but they're also playing such prestigious spots as the Red Rocks in Colorado), so after reading Mr. Ritchie's opinion of Mr. Gano, what will it be like to see them onstage together, tearing through their greatest hits? And will "Blister in the Sun" make everybody's mouths water?
As we put away our childish things, aren't we supposed to accrue wisdom? So perhaps there is a lesson to be learned, here. Maybe I'll be more reticent with my future pop culture enthusiasms or less dismayed when my other childhood heroes sell out. In the meantime, maybe I ought to go get a physical, I have a suspicion that my prostate has suddenly doubled in size.
