Steve Reynolds Program - Homemade
Hey all! I’m back from an epic road trip with wife, child and dog. We explored the northerlies with focus on paleontology and chill-ass touristing. It was incredible, the weather was temperate and it felt like a great reset.
Without a computer at hand on our odyssey, I neglected this newsletter. This prompted a slew of email (if “a slew of” means “one”) asking me what was up. Oh wellz, I’m doing this to contemplate why I like things I like, make a self-assessment of the soundtrack of my life. Maybe by song 100, I’ll be able to synthesize good prose, effective communication and insights enough to get two emails when I take a long break.
Song #34
Homemade
by Sebadoh
I’ve alluded before to Sebadoh’s Bubble and Scrape and its prominent place in my Great Spring of Self-Pity. It wasn’t a pretty sight, I’m sure, but I just read something a comix artist wrote on their old drawings that felt true for me. She said, “[…] I also don’t feel embarrassed for the previous versions of myself. I just think to myself ‘yeah I was going through a lot back then,’ not ‘WHAT WAS I THINKING???’” And yeah, I was going through some stuff, but don’t we all go through stuff at all times? Who cares if we sometimes look like a crumpled ball of pathos? It all be good.
Sebadoh, especially Lou Barlow, was the sentimental third of the Indie Rock Trinity along with bemused Pavement and obtuse GBV. First song I heard of theirs was “The Freed Pig,” the precursor to Barlow’s recriminating relationship songs (but instead of a girlfriend, he sings to ex-bandmate J. Mascis). Next song I glommed on to was “Brand New Love,” an anthem of dissonance that could only have been written in the early nineties.
It’s Bubble and Scrape, their fourth album, where they ascended to a level of total awesum. The album is masterly sequenced, starting with two songs each from Barlow, drummer Eric Gaffney and gutarist Jason Loewenstein. They flow from earnest to distant to emphatic; the different viewpoints of each member complementing each other—obviously, they all are working on getting their relationships copacetic.
Twelve songs in we get “Homemade.” Sure, it’s a semi-ironic title since this was Sebadoh’s first album fully recorded in a studio. It begins with a guitar playing the progression that lasts throughout the song besides the twice-played bridge. Then the drums and thunderous bass join in, it feels almost like a serious attempt at an anthem.
You know, how new country songs try hard at being singalongs? The difference between them and “Homemade” are Barlow’s introspective and morose lines in the singular first person keep it miles apart from country’s plural “We” songs (“we do things like this/we are proud of that” is the basic formula). But “we” is dangerous. “We” implies a pride that the singer and fans aren’t a “they” out there. “We” puts the identifying listener in a group away from others. “I” in a song is personal and the implied “you” makes it a tete-a-tete—no sectarian definitions here.
That makes “Homemade” an intense listen, though. I always misheard the last word of the first line “Sittin’ around with my homemade bone” as “bong,” which makes the situation way different than the one he’s confessing to, a reflection on an ended relationship while masturbating.
Masturbation? Poof ! – chance of being anthem gone.
I’m not going to parse the lyrics; Barlow says what he means. He assesses his consumption of pornography and its effect on his relationship with women, reprimanding his inner “selfish child” that compels him to pursue it.
It’s one part of the big theme of this landmark album: I really loved you, but I get why you stopped dealing with me. It’s a document of young men growing up and realizing the music aimed at them, punk with its anger and metal with its misogyny, can’t serve as a salve to what’s ailing them. Maybe what rots within society is rotting within them. May the confessions be cathartic.
the school year begins!
This issue’s Song I’m Mad I Forgot To Put On The List is “The Have Nots” by X. Tom Waits could only dream about writing such a real song about a dive bar denizen.
See you sooner than later.