Monthly Archives: August 2019

TOM CLANCY AND THE DUBIOUS COMFORT OF BOOMER DADS

Essays, Thoughts, ,

I’ve had a rough year. I had two dogs die, my house has needed some expensive repairs, and my habit of closely following the news has turned into daily exposure to toxic waste. We all crave simple comforts in difficult times, and I’ve fallen back into an old habit: when I’m in the mood to read comforting trash, I reach for Tom Clancy. And after the current bender, I think we should talk about him a little.

Uh, Dad, you’re not mad, are you?

Right now, through time and space, I can hear the question you’re asking yourself: why do I care about the work of some hack writer of right-wing airport trash who’s been dead for a decade? And that’s a good question, one I’ve been wrestling with inside my head for a while now. I have a few solid answers: first, because the work of said dead right-wing hack writer really does provide a perfect encapsulation of one of the dominant forces in our dyspeptic, sliding-through-disasters-towards-even-greater-disasters political system, and to understand that is to understand another corner of the current ongoing shitshow. Tom Clancy’s books are by, of, and for Boomer Dads, and if understanding the mind of the Boomer Dad isn’t sufficient to understanding what the hell is happening in this country, I think it’s at least necessary.

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Lonely Cowboy

Music, Wave That Flag

Disc 1 Track 13

If The Bottle Rockets sags on its back half, it at least ends on a strong, if depressing, note. “The Lonely Cowboy” is the Rockets in full short-stories-about-small-towns mode, a character study about a man who feels like he’s living in the wrong time. There’s an almost rider-on-horseback swagger to the song, but that can’t really hide the crushing desperation of phrases like

Sometimes he goes down to the local theatre
And watches pale riders on the movie screen
At times it seems so unbearable and unfair
He just falls apart at the seams

This is strong stuff. It’s a rare Bottle Rockets song written by other members of the band (Ortmann and Parr), but it fits in seamlessly with the rest of the band’s work, and Henneman fully inhabits the character he’s singing about. If the Rockets’ small-town mopers can drag sometimes, this one works really well because it’s so specific; we’re hearing details about the suffering and interior life of a particular, well-drawn person, and that makes all the difference (contrast this with the universal dreariness of songs that just focus at the town or even regional level and say “this sucks”). No instrumental pyrotechnics on this one, no flashy drums or guitars, just raw competence that conveys weariness without being wearisome. A damn good end to a damn good album.

The combined version of The Bottle Rockets and The Brooklyn Side currently available on Spotify contains some bonus tracks, but I’ll be setting those aside for this project, since they’re mostly demos of songs that have already been covered or will eventually be covered. So that’s it for The Bottle Rockets. But it’s not time for The Brooklyn Side quite yet; first, watch for a longer entry about another high-profile Henneman project that was going down at about the same time.