Where Credit Is and Isn't Due

I remember when there was a time when you could only drive a Mercedes if you had money. Luxury cars were precisely that, a luxury. These days, it seems, any self-delusional image climber with 15 cents and a dual airbag inflated ego can drive a Mercedes. We are a "look-at-me" society, more concerned with the facade than the foundation. We are adept at "frontin'', if you will. We are brokety broke and yet, we charge and lease away the days like there will be no tomorrow, or, at least, not one we will ever accept any fiscal responsibility for.

Bailout? Takeover? Buyout? Merger?

I've seen people on TV talking about how they should teach money management classes in high school to better prepare students for their financial futures. Good idea. Still, the basics are what seemed to trip us up. We learned how to add and subtract in the first grade, didn't we? They called the class Math, if I recall. I believe the standard questions were along the lines of: If the apple costs 80 cents and you have 50 cents, can you afford the apple? No, right? Right. So, you can't have the apple, right? Right. Because you don't have enough money, right? Right.

And yet, the basic rules and lessons have grown loopholes. Question: What if you put the 80 cent apple on your credit card? Well, then, you still can't afford it, right? Right. And yet, you can have it, right? Right. You can eat it, right? Right. And right now, right? You can eat it right now, right? Right. Enjoy it in the moment and worry about it later...when later, that 80 cent apple winds up costing you $17.00 because of the interest rates, and the fact that you can barely cover your minimum payment due each month. Rotten to the core. Yummy. Why stop with one apple? Get two. Three. A bushel! Get a bushel of apples.

The profound greed that percolated on Wall Street, allowing mortgage and investment firms and credit companies to take advantage of the clueless many who managed to fool themselves into believing they weren't being fooled is sickening. And yet, as they sold and resold mortgages and charged astronomical fees wherever they could, licking their chops all the while, Main Street marched along to a beat it could not keep up with. Wall Street is guilty, yes, but so is Main Street. Imagists who, knowing they didn't really have the money to buy a house, still went after those too-good-to-be-true NINJA (no income, no job, or assets) mortgage loans just so they could own a house and, dare I suggest, show off to their equally fiscally doomed neighbors. What happened to having money and living well below your means? My mother always taught us this: If you can't afford something, you don't need it. She also said, like twenty years ago, that credit cards would destroy this country. To this day, my mother, a very successful businesswoman, doesn't have one credit card. She needed me to get her a cell phone because she couldn't get one with, you know, money.

This financial meltdown, I'm sorry to say, is a bright orange semaphore desperately directing us toward the real evil-doers...ourselves. We are to blame for our own mess. Look what we done did.

Car leases are what really amuse me. What the fark do you need to trade your car in for every three years? Oh, I know, because you're too high class and important to drive the same car for more than three years. Or, at least, that's what you'd have others believe about you. Allow me to tell you about my car. My car has been my car since 1995, when my parents finally bought it for me after I had spent three years driving a ten year old Pontiac with one windshield wiper, a dragging muffler, and a hole in the radiator. I managed to hold the windshield wiper's rubber inlay in place with a yellow scrunchie, and, frankly, I just got used to the noise, smoke, and smell my vehicle produced on a daily basis until it exploded on Route 4 one afternoon. Anyway, this December, I will have had my car for thirteen years. And, I will continue to drive it until it falls apart all around and under me and I have to Flintstone footwork it to get it to move. When that day comes (I figure I have another year or two, at least) I will buy myself a car with the cash I have saved. Leasing means losing, so no leasing for me, thank you. Then, I will drive that new energy-efficient car for, God willing, another 12 to 15 years. In case you are wondering, both my degrees are in Literature.

Personally, I know what I have and don't have. And I know what I can and cannot afford. I make many a sacrifice in my everyday life (most notably with regard to my living situation) just to make sure I'm not putting myself at a terrible disadvantage. In a hole. While I may not independently be rolling in the dough, I am not in debt like many of my peers. And I have been told that I am in possession of enviable credit. Am I fly? Do I sparkle when I walk? Am I money? No. Not at all. Most people would not look at me and think, wow. I mean, why would they? Haven't we already established just how lousy most people in this country are with the whole credit thing?

Word Up

Everlast, not to be confused with the boxing gear, nor with the alternative rock group Everclear, is one guy, the former lead guy from the all-white 90's hip hop group House of Pain ("Jump Around") who has since resurfaced a few times and gone on to enjoy a respectable level of solo success. He is, perhaps, best known as a solo artist for his socially conscious "hick hop" track, "What It's Like", that married old school beats with an acoustic guitar. At the time (1998, I think it was) this was hardly chartered territory. Still, Everlast, with a surprisingly melodic, yet husky singing voice, triumphantly jumped back onto the music scene having found his creative niche. With an altered perspective on life and death, which came courtesy of his having survived a heart attack at the age 28, Everlast was a new man who had something to say, but nothing to prove.

A flawed, but earnest and interesting salt-of-the-earth kind of artist, Everlast seems most at home when he is documenting the grimy underside of the celebrated facade of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. His penchant for telling the stories of the often dismissed folk who suffer through their lives with soiled souls, broken hearts, and dirty veins, earns him points in the "keepin' it real" books of many a music critic and fan alike. I almost don't even mind the fact that he sings about being "uncurable" in a straight-faced, non-ironic way on one track off his latest CD release, Love, War and the Ghost of Whitey Ford.

Clearly, when it comes to expressing what they mean to say, writers, well, songwriters, specifically, have their favorite, tried-and-true words and topics from which they choose. They effortlessly reach into their rusty toolboxes and don't, generally, make any apologies for what they pull out. They gravitate toward certain themes and communicate their thoughts and feelings in ways that tend to be comparable to the ways they conduct their lives, the ways they notice others conducting their lives, the ways they wish they could conduct their lives or, on a far less integrity-driven note, the ways in which they merely want to be perceived by their audiences. On occasion, they create something we'd call art. Sonically speaking, I think Everlast's latest solo effort, Love, War & the Ghost of Whitey Ford is a brand new & interesting stretch of lonely road, and yet, the lyrical content suggests the same old scenery. Empathetic as ever, Everlast does not have a heart problem. Not at all, actually. No, what Everlast has is an art problem.

When crisp, dramatic horns introduce the opening track, "Kill the Emperor", it is difficult not to let your goose bumps dictate your opinion of the song overall. First, you envision the royal court. Then Washington, D.C. presents itself. The pomp and circumstance that could only highlight the disconnect between the rich and the poor, the enfranchised and the disenfranchised in our modern American times is evoked instantly. And then the emperor's assassin enters, trying to flex his political muscle via a stale decree that is intended to kill, but doesn't. Save for the "fifty states of denial" line, nothing that follows the horns is especially groundbreaking or even remotely poetic. Plus, the figurative notion of "killing the emperor" is as old and dusty as monarchies themselves. Tired. Snooze. Wake me when it's over.

And yet, stripped of its narration, the music of L,W&tGoWF is remarkably alive and impressive. It really is. Needless to say, the SOUND here is king, as it stimulates in an unpredictable, mixed bag fashion that, at its best, inspires smiles and bursts of movement. It successfully rocks and hops and picks and strums and, kudos to production all around, seamlessly. However, where the music seems studied and precise, the off-the-top-of-the-head lyric writing seems to have finally run its course. This is where Everlast (i.e. Whitey Ford) may need to invest in a notebook and start physically writing words and concepts down on the page. Writers write differently when they put pen to paper. If a songwriter is going to be bold enough to experiment with instrumentation and "beats", s/he needs to do the same on the lyrical/subject matter front and open up to the possibility of telling different stories. Or, at the very least, the same stories, just framed with more of a creative edge and enthusiasm.

Now, I know there have been reviews out there praising the lyrical content of L,W&tGoWF, but, alas, upon further inspection you'll notice that those reviews, themselves, are poorly written. Just an observation, of course. Anyway, I don't think anyone will revoke Everlast's Biggie Smalls/Jay-Z writing-without-writing-anything-down lyricist's pass for daring to challenge himself for the sake of his craft. Pen and paper are not just for autograph signing, after all. Perhaps they might afford Whitey the opportunity to withdraw from a WORD BANK that does not only include the following words:

junkie/hell/whore/girl/broken/tired/pain/devil/city/jones/heaven/

heart/angel/drinking/pills/knees/God/dirty/scars/die/love/live/

poor/bones/rich/high/low/lies/gun/kill.

I mean, it can't hurt to try. After all, a singular, personal truth can be communicated through an assortment of different channels and still be true in the end.

Don't get me wrong; I think this is a very good CD, but there are moments on L,W&tGoWF that suggest that it could have been a great one. A really great one. A classic, even. The track "Die in Yer Arms", for example, sparkles from every direction and in every light. With a wink and a nod to an 80's dance floor, this track proves to be a perfect, little, "vicious sway" of a song because it is fun, light, infectious, and witty. A grape metaphor done justice: juicy, but tightly wrapped. The verses are not long, self-indulgent attempts at trying to communicate something meaningful without quite getting there. The message arrives immediately and, dare I say, artistically.

Another highlight is the track "Friend". I don't care how many scars, or broken hearts, or I-fuck-up-a-lot-but-love-me-anyway-girl references are made on this song; I love it in spite of itself. In spite of myself. The words (including the non-word "uncurable") and the overall confession of sorts are not what make this song fresh; it's the angle and the sincerity here that make this song worth my looking like a complete junkie for when I sing my scarred and broken heart out when I play the hell out of it while driving my tired bones into the dirty city.