52 in 52: Week 5 - "Lonely Avenue"

Week of 11/9/14 - 11/15/14

Album from 2010

This week, of the list that I made when I went out shopping, I decided to get the only one I hadn't listened to at all, not even a little bit. So this write-up of "Lonely Avenue" by Ben Folds and Nick Hornby is of a complete first listen.

It's a little bit weird that I've never listened to this album before. I'm a fan of Ben Folds/Ben Folds Five, and I own mp3s of all of his music and have listened to all of it, and know most of it pretty well. He's not an all-time favorite of mine, but he's a pretty damn good songwriter and listening to his music is a great way to pass the time.

And of the six novels that Nick Hornby has written, I've read four of them and own five (his new book, "Funny Girl" just came out in the UK a couple of days ago - I wasn't counting that). That's also not even counting the collection of his articles about books he's written/read monthly called "Ten Years in the Tub" that I pick up and read from and contemplate buying every single time I'm in Barnes and Noble. He's one of my favorite authors. Plus there's the movie adaptations of his books, which I've seen all of except "A Long Way Down," and I even still watch the NBC sitcom version of "About a Boy." I don't really know why, but it's probably because I love Nick Hornby and I love Jason Katims and well...maybe it'll get good eventually? I don't know, but what I'm saying is, I follow both of these dudes all over the place, wherever they go, and somehow, "Lonely Avenue," with Ben Folds playing the Elton John to Nick Hornby's Bernie Taupin, slipped through the cracks and off of my radar.

The whole "first listen" thing makes this one a little bit different. I haven't had time to listen to this and let it sink in as much as some of the other ones I've written about, but I also thought it would be better, more pure, since this whole series is supposed to be about listening to vinyl copies of things. Only having the vinyl (it came with a download card that I didn't download yet) forces me to use my record player for this, and forces me to use it on this album over and over again. I didn't just pop it on while I was making food or reading a book or eating. I actually had to sit down and force myself to listen to it. I learn music best by a sort of osmosis, where I just put it on in the background like 30 times in a row.

Writing music is different from writing prose. When you're writing music, you have no time to stop and explain something, or delve into further detail. There's not much room for subtlety or letting things simmer. It's hard to build up to a climax. Because of all of this, music can be much more straight-forward. Bruce Springsteen is one of my favorite writers, and "Thunder Road" is one of my very favorite songs, but could you imagine an author writing a short story about redemption and using the word 'redemption' right there in it, for every one to see? Even a phrase that is such a perfect ending for a song like "It's a town full of losers, I'm pulling out of here to win," would sound terrible as the last line of a piece of literary fiction.

Nick Hornby writes great prose. He's conversational and engaging and his sentences might not knock you out, but he's constantly stuffing his stories with ideas and rich characters. But I'm not so sure he writes great lyrics. If there was anyone to adapt Nick Hornby lyrics to music, it would be Ben Folds, what with his elastic style and colloquial catalog, his sometimes long-winded digressions and other such things not all that common in music, like when he says:

"Says here an astronaut
Put on a pair of diapers
Drove eighteen hours
To kill her boyfriend
And in my hotel room, I'm wondering
If you read that story too?
And if we both might
Be having the same imaginary conversation"

in the song "Cologne" from his solo album, "Way to Normal." It's a little bit weird and it's very casual and off-topic, but at the same time, it's kind of sweet, right?

But they didn't mesh as well as I thought they would. The album even starts off a little pre-emptively defensive. You know how people, before they do something they're not used to and might be a little bit embarrassed to try, will give you an excuse about why what they're about to do might suck? And you're just like, yeah, yeah, get on with it. That's "A Working Day," on this album. "Ask my friends, ask my sister/They all think my stuff is great." Ben's taking a break for this album, and they both just wanted to let us know, as if anyone buying this album wouldn't already know. Even if they didn't, it's all over the cover.

Songs like "Practical Amanda" and "Belinda" seem like they would be good Nick Hornby characters, in the vein of my favorite Nick Hornby character, Katie Carr from "How to Be Good," but the relationship between Amanda and the singer in "Practical Amanda" (she's practical, he's a daydreamer) just isn't as compelling as it would be if it had more time to grow, and less of a need to just come straight out and tell us that she's practical and he's a daydreamer.

I think one of the only songs on the album that finds an interesting idea that's small enough to explore in a three to five minutes is the album's third track, "Levi Johnston's Blues," which I thought may be about some old, legendary, mythic, lost blues singer that I somehow had never heard of. It's not; it's about Sarah Palin's daughter's baby daddy. The first couple of times I listened to it, I felt like it was a mocking sort of song, one that calls out its characters simply for being "rednecks." After all, the chorus goes like this:

"I'm a fucking redneck,
I live to hang out with the boys,
Play some hockey, do some fishing,
And kill some moose.
I like to shoot the shit and do some chilling I guess,
You fuck with me and I'll kick your ass."

 And in some ways, I do still think that chorus is a little bit mocking and even a little bit scolding (that moose thing). Which is all fine and alright, I guess. But an 18-year-old kid who lives in Alaska and does dumb shit sometimes and likes to fish and play hockey and hang out with his friends really isn't the worst person in the world. And anyone in the Palin family/family story is a really easy target.

And that idea, the idea that this kid really isn't all that bad, is so easy to realize from this song that I think that's what Hornby and Folds were going for. There are tons of kids just like him around the world, and knocking up your girlfriend isn't the worst thing anyone has ever done (in fact, it's not even really a bad thing. Irresponsible, maybe, depending on the situation, but life itself can be a pretty wonderful thing, so is the creation of it). The song is about him being a normal American teenager and suddenly being thrust into the national media and having decisions made for him:

"I say, 'Mother-in-law? No, we ain't getting married!'
They say, 'Soon you will, boy; she just announced it.'"

"So we talk and it turns out we don't believe in abortion,
And sex outside marriage is against our religion."

There aren't many standouts. You know the way that Elton John could turn basically anything Bernie Taupin wrote into an excellent song? Like "Your Song" sounds fantastic and when the music is that good, you can give the lyrics an easier time when you're hearing them. It's a win-win situation. Here he is literally turning an oven manual into a great song:

I'm not so sure Ben Folds has that. "Password" sounds like it may have already been a Ben Folds song that I forgot about. It's a mildly funny idea, trying to guess someone's password, but isn't very memorable.

The best one is probably "From Above." Because music can be vague and less specific in the words chosen, a chorus like the one in "From Above" really works.

"It's so easy from above,
You can really see it all.
People who belong together,
Lost and sad and small.
But there's nothing to be done for them,
It doesn't work that way.
Sure we all have soulmates,
But we walk past them every day."

It's one of those great ideas that Nick Hornby uses and here it's used to perfection. The song's verses are about a couple of soulmates who keep missing each other named Tom and Martha (that I would love to believe is a reference to the song in the video below).

I know that I sound down on this album a lot in here, but that's mostly just because I had very high expectations for it, given the people involved. It's still very listenable, and it's a pretty good time, too. I'm glad that I own it now.

Last Week's: "Collapse Into Now" by R.E.M.