*Track 8
Sheltered Youth - 10th March 2018
The only thing certain about Trump stories, however bizarre they became, was the inevitability another would follow, like night after day, with every likelihood of trumping its predecessor. A case proven, yet again, over the last couple of days.
Only yesterday Stuart had read about two of the President’s loyal supporters, wearing their obligatory ‘Make America Great Again’ baseball caps, who were captured on film threatening to burn down a Berkeley bookstore. Given the shop was named Revolution Books and based in California (hardly a Trumpian homeland) it was unsurprising this establishment had flashed up red on the rednecks’ radar.
There had been a couple of details in this story though that made it stand out; first, the gang moniker chosen by the group, the ‘Western Chauvinists’, and second, the extraordinary reason they had given to justify their planned arson, claiming the shop’s staff and customers were all, “anti-fascist pieces of shit.” It struck Stuart a fresh low had been reached, even for an apparently bottomless pit, when chauvinism could now be worn as a badge of honour while anti-fascism was regarded a crime!
But then, just this morning, the ‘Land of the Free’ had demonstrated a true egalitarianism, confirming its capability to breed idiots equally on both sides of its new divide, with reports landing on the upcoming launch of ‘NeverTrump.dating’.
This new site claimed it would give liberals, “a unique opportunity to skip those awkward political conversations,” and to find a suitable partner while, “uniting in love, uniting against Trump.” Yet more evidence, as if it were needed, Stuart unavoidably concluded, that a whole nation had now collectively lost its marbles.
These stories simply served to remind Stuart of the incredulity he had felt, years ago, whenever he caught the US version of ‘The Apprentice’. Trump’s blindingly obvious inadequacies as a captain of industry would just have been laughable, almost cartoon like, if it hadn’t been for their bitter undercurrent of self-importance, chauvinism, and, unfailingly, with the show’s female contenders, overt misogyny. “He couldn’t run a piss up in a brewery,” (not even a condescending one) had never seemed a more apt summary. Yet here Donald was, now, in charge of the western world.
This wasn’t the time for Stuart to be worrying himself about the downfall of civilisation as we know it though, he had more important matters to attend to. It was that time of the month again (as Trump would undoubtedly have observed!), and the latest ‘Challenge’ would shortly be released. He hoped this one wouldn’t turn out to be as traumatic as February’s instalment.
He still had no idea if, in the end, he had just been lucky to choose BERLIN as his second answer, or whether there really had been some legitimacy to the logic he had applied. After qualifying in around 400th position, Stuart had kept a close eye on the success counter afterwards, as it rose steadily to reach the 1800 cut off mark by late afternoon. By its very nature this needed to be a competition with ‘no love lost’, and Stuart accepted he would readily climb over his rivals as and when required, but he had spared a thought last month for those unlucky ‘Challengers’ who must have placed BERLIN last on their randomised solution list and been eliminated as a result. Maybe, although he doubted it, they were today managing to enjoy a free Saturday.
Had Stuart been right to factor in a musical link? He would keep an open mind to that possibility when the next ‘Challenge’ was revealed in an hour or so, but in the interim it was perhaps worth reading back over some notes he had made while digging deeper into this theory since. The case, to use a Scottish legal term, appeared, “not proven.”
Spotify had been Stuart’s research tool of choice. Armed with a full list of the ‘Challenge’ solutions to date; Voltaire, Alpha, Palatine, Pillow Fight, Colette (or Collette), Chameleons, and Berlin, he had cross referenced each against everything relevant held on the streaming platform’s database, split over three categories; artists, songs, and album titles. He had used an arbitrary cut-off point of 100,000 listens, reasoning anything less was likely to be too obscure to warrant further consideration.
This exercise had done little to disperse any of the thickening ‘Challenge’ fog, but there had, at least, been parts Stuart found educational (as his notes highlighted). Enjoyable even. Although, having mistakenly shared this opinion with Anne, Stuart guessed he had probably deserved her response of, “you’re just weird.”
Voltaire: There were songs by an Argentinian techno act and a Swedish rock/rap band (neither being descriptors you heard every day!), plus ‘Radio Voltaire’, an album by Kino, a supposed UK ‘supergroup’ who seemed anything but super. The most popular artist was Aurelio Voltaire, a Cuban American singer/songwriter who had stunned Stuart with 145,000 monthly listens, annoyingly three times more than Cabaret Voltaire, though his gut feel was that the latter still better met the brief.
Alpha: Stuart owned the top-rated song here, ‘Alpha Male’ from the Gang of Four’s ‘Happy Now’. The only album that had registered was one called ‘Alpha Brain Waves’, styling itself as ‘deep sleep relaxation’, which Stuart had found strangely diverting. From an artist perspective everything else was blown away by Alpha 9, a Russian DJ Stuart had never heard of, but whose astounding 386,000 listens (seven Cabaret Voltaire’s worth) had continued the trend for surprises.
Palatine: Nothing on the song or album front. Unsurprising really, you wouldn’t expect to find many contemporary songs named after Roman hills. He did however uncover a Parisian indie/folk band called Palatine who weren’t that bad, at least not for a French group.
Pillow Fight: Who would have guessed you could find more than ninety Spotify songs with this title? More predictably, all bar two seemed uninteresting and unpopular, though these exceptions proved shocking; the first was by Yung Gravy, a Minnesotan rapper with 6 million listens, while the second came from Galantis, a Swedish electronic dance duo (who had recorded with Dolly Parton) who clocked up 13 million (two hundred Cabaret Voltaire’s worth on Stuart’s scale, which was just getting silly!)
Colette: This revealed little (under either spelling). There was a soundtrack from the upcoming Keira Knightly film, and a delightfully named artist, Colette Lush, who had apparently come to fame on ‘American Idol’. Most popular though was a song by Langhorne Slim, a singer/songwriter from Pennsylvania, with over a million followers.
Chameleons: Stuart hadn’t been aware of either Gary Numan’s album ‘Music for Chameleons’ (not a bad title), nor one named ‘Chameleons’ by an indie group from Utah called The Sardines (a terrible band name), but he had been familiar with The Chameleons, an ‘80s post-punk psychedelia group from Manchester, contemporaries of both the Bunnymen and Teardrops (but largely without their success).
Berlin: There was the Californian band’s annoyingly catchy ‘Take My Breath Away’ from ‘Top Gun’ (which Stuart had always hated), a little-known Snow Patrol song, and albums by Bear’s Den (London folk) and Kota the Friend (Brooklyn hip hop), but really there had only been the Lou Reed song that seemed to have any ‘Challenge’ legs.
Of all the songs Stuart had ended up listening to while trawling Spotify (most of them garbage) it had really only been Cabaret Voltaire, The Chameleons (whose ‘Up the Down Escalator’ he had been pleased to rediscover), and Lou Reed’s ‘Berlin’ that seemed to match the ‘flavour’ of musical linkage he somehow thought he had ‘tasted’ within the ‘Challenge’ clues.
Any subsequent attempt Stuart made to find further common ground between these three however, or to cross reference them with any of the other five solutions, had failed miserably. This had simply become another exercise he could file away in his growing ‘revisit later’ folder. Another blind alley, albeit one where he had discovered some live entertainment, whatever Anne might say!
Spookily, at the precise moment Stuart found himself mentally disparaging her, his wife diverted him from his research deliberations, waving her hand in the direction of Alexa and asking, “who’s this then?”
“It’s Declan McKenna, it’s called Brazil,” Stuart replied.
“Not bad. Any relation to Paul?”
“No, none of that pseudo-hypno-bollocks. He’s nineteen, just sixteen when he self-released this on YouTube.”
“What’s the Brazil bit all about?”
“The World Cup, or the corruption behind it really. Pretty insightful for sixteen. Joe really likes it.” Stuart was always pleased if Anne showed an interest in his music and he had shamelessly thrown in the Joe reference, hoping to keep the discussion flowing.
“Why’re you playing it now?” His plan had worked.
“Still three-quarters of an hour ‘til ‘Challenge’ time, thought I’d update my top pop songs list. I’m putting this in at number five, the slot I keep open for something new.”
Anne surprisingly took all of this at face value, he had clearly worn her down, over time, to a point where such behaviour seemed normal, simply replying, “OK, suppose ‘Teenage Kicks’ is still number one?”
Stuart’s perennial, almost pathological, pursuit of the perfect pop song had, as Anne’s question implied, got a bit stuck in time. His regular top four entries just switched positions according to his mood. These ‘ever presents’ were however, in his view, all masterpieces of the craft, featuring the essential verse, chorus, repeat, middle eight, chorus, structure the format required, yet encapsulating within it a timelessness that had stood the test of time.
A perfect pop song needed to capture youthfulness, freezing it in the moment, yet couch this feeling in a form, and with words, that never aged. It needed to make you feel like you were sixteen again (as Pete Shelley had once observed) every time you heard it. Yet continue to pull off that trick long after you weren’t!
A high barrier maybe, but one Stuart believed his top four songs would forever soar above. They had all been written from a place of inexperience, yet each told its story in a way everybody could remember experiencing. It wasn’t by accident, he felt, that Robert Smith had once described ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ as, “naïve to the point of insanity.”
It was unsurprising therefore that the average age that Stuart’s top five list had been composed at was just nineteen, less than eighteen if you factored out ‘Another Girl …’ which Perrett had penned at (an almost certainly immature) twenty-five. This allowed each to capture the required mood so perfectly that to paraphrase Kurt (from another strong contender) they were all songs that would, for all time, smell of teen spirit:
5) ‘Brazil’ by Declan McKenna – the latest choice to occupy his reserved ‘new blood’ spot on an otherwise static list, its infectious, catchy tune hiding a cleverly satirical take on the ugliness lurking behind the beautiful game.
4) ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’ by The Only Ones – not Perrett’s finest lyrical hour, but never has a song had a finer more irresistible rhythm, or a catchier chorus. Astoundingly this single had a highest ever chart position of just 57. Really?!
3) ‘Girl from Mars’ by Ash – a beautifully structured song with smart teen words, its metaphorical Martian ‘love interest’ being unobtainable (in a universally recognisable way). The point where the chorus kicks back in, from a quiet bridge, is pure genius.
2) ‘Teenage Kicks’ by The Undertones – the opening drumbeat hooks you, but it’s the verses that finish the job off, with a repeating guitar line that perfectly underscores Feargal’s yearning every time his girl walks down the street.
1) ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ by The Cure – Pop precision. Jangly guitars keep driving Robert’s growing heartache forward until he reaches the sublime lyrical pathos of misjudging the relationship’s limit. Pushing his girl too far. Its sentiment gets you every time.
Making a further attempt to maintain Anne’s unexpected engagement (using a tactic suggested by his ‘Girl from Mars’ entry) Stuart asked Alexa to switch to playing Tim Wheeler’s solo album ‘Lost Domain’ for their final pre-Challenge soundtrack. He knew this was a favourite of hers. She liked Ash well enough, but preferred the more introspective, personal style the singer had adopted for his solo album. A record dominated by songs written for his father, specifically about losing him to dementia.
Tim Wheeler was probably one of the politest, certainly least anarchic, entries on Stuart’s maverick register, but by God he could write a mean chorus!
Any mention of Ash always made Stuart recall the longstanding, drunken wager he had once made with Charlie over which of their favourite bands would headline Wembley first? While Stuart backed Ash, Charlie’s money had been on Shed Seven. Neither of them, with the winning post set so distant, had ever had to pay out; though on the positive side this just meant the argument could be prolonged, likely forever.
Stuart had once tried to claim a moral victory, after Ash headlined the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury in 1997 (as late replacements for Steve Winwood, whose truck got stuck in some mud!), something Shed Seven had never done (and never would). But Charlie pedantically, just because it wasn’t Wembley, had refused to back down.
‘Lost Domain’ was an altogether softer affair than Ash, allowing Wheeler to demonstrate a new depth to his writing. It featured a series of heartfelt songs that depicted his dad’s long decline, and ultimate demise, from the degenerative disease, each holding emotions that unavoidably mirrored Stuart’s shared paternal experience.
Whether it was the minutiae of sadness intimated within ‘Hospital’s visiting time (with its evocation of paperbacks and clementines), or the condition being addressed more directly in ‘Medicine’ (using his father’s imagined fear at forgetting his son’s name), Wheeler’s acutely observed sentiments always transported Stuart right back to his own experience and the pain of losing a second parent.
It had taken two stages this time, thanks to dementia. The disease first took away the vibrant, full of life character he had always known (and always depended upon), before subsequently, somehow not quite as painfully, defeating the body still left behind.
Stuart was relieved, he realised, that the ‘Challenge’ deadline would arrive too soon for them to reach ‘Lost Domain’s bonus disc. It was a track on there, ‘Sheltered Youth’, which always hit him the hardest.
Coming from a generation taught, as Robert Smith had twisted lyrically, that boys shouldn’t cry, even at times of crisis, Stuart was more inclined to stoicism than tears. He could count on his fingers how many times he could remember crying (certainly in full sobbing mode) which made it all the more surprising to admit that twice in his life written words alone had proven powerful enough to cause him to break down.
He hadn’t cried at the time his dad died, the pain seeming to have long passed. Yet later he found others portraying their own losses so empathetically that his postponed tears had finally fallen. The first had been the passage in Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ where the father, having fought to deliver his son to safety, surrenders to death, while the second was Wheeler’s final poignant, heart wrenching, and wholly apposite line in ‘Sheltered Youth’, “now he’s gone I’ll always be grateful for the days of his protection.”
“Come on daydreamer,” Anne said softly, knowing the dark places ‘Lost Domain’ could take Stuart back to, “it’s time for action.” Appreciating how much his dad would have applauded Anne’s gentle kick up the backside, and probably joined in with her, Stuart gratefully took her lead and completed the ‘Challenge’ logon:
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(To be continued, at 9am tomorrow. Can you solve ‘Challenge 24’ in the meantime? If you think you have got the answer, then please reply direct to this email post, to help keep the ‘challenge’ open for other readers.)