Music |
Dawes: “Living in the Future”
Published: Jun 20, 2018
Category:
Rock
NOTE: I’m well aware that Butler is a “no politics” zone. I don’t think this is “politics.”
The blows come so fast now it’s hard to remember that it was only two days ago — Monday, June 18 — that ProPublica released the audiotape from inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility, in which children can be heard wailing as an agent jokes, “We have an orchestra here, what’s missing is a conductor,” and I understood, deeply, what I had only understood intellectually, that it can get worse, much worse. The jailers write numbers on the arms of the immigrant children in the baby prisons because some are too small to know their full names or how to spell — they’re not temporary wards of the state, they’re literal orphans.
A line’s been crossed.
In Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Timothy Snyder writes about the pleasure Germans and Poles took in killing children, right out in the open, in daylight, and although this great, great book is 560 pages and I marked it up like I had to take a test on it, that’s the paragraph burned into my memory. And we do these things too. In Dispatches, Michael Herr writes about a reporter asking a helicopter crew’s door gunner in Vietnam, “How can you shoot women and children?” He replied, “It’s easy, you just don’t lead ’em as much.”
You and I are decent people. We don’t know many, if any, people in the Republican “base.” And if we do, we know them as individuals, as cranks, perhaps, but as people who are fundamentally like us. Monday blew that fantasy away. 27% of the American people approve of ripping children from their parents’ arms. And I doubt they care what happens to those kids, as long as it doesn’t happen in their zip code. This 27% — they don’t understand. The ICE-y hands that steal those children can, if ordered, steal their children. Yours. Mine. Would they? Could they? They could. They would. Because… orders. Or because those children are The Other. (“Democrats are the problem,” the President tweeted. “They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country.”) Infest. That’s the tell.
In this dark, dark place, I spent Friday, unable to find an idea that would make me feel I could do something to stop this moment — I think of it as 1858 — from becoming 1860.
And then… a temporary silver lining: an invitation to see Dawes in a basement club called Berlin, on Avenue A (capacity: 200). The last time I saw Dawes was at the Beacon (capacity: 2,894). The next chance to see them: as the opening act for ELO at Madison Square Garden (capacity: 20,789). So as perks go, this was platinum — the last time Dawes played a room this small was college.
I’ve written about Dawes before. Here. And here. (You might, if you like LA-based guitar bands and terrific songwriting, look at the tour schedule and Make Plans.) And there’s much to say about their new CD, “Passwords.” [To buy the CD from Amazon and get a free MP3 download, click here. For the MP3 download, click here. To download “Living in the Future,” click here.] But this is not a review. I want to take you, as best I can, to that crowded, airless room on Avenue A.
I’m standing in a VIP area I’ve invented for myself: not where all the fans are bunched, but on the side, so I’m maybe 6′ from the band, but at an angle. The bar is right behind me; I can leave my drink there. It’s a smart place to be; my companions are the program director of WFUV, a senior publicist, a creative director at a major magazine, and the roadies. They’re professionals, I’m a rube. I try not to be too excited.
But then Dawes comes out, and you can feel the surge. Three guitars launch. The drummer hits so hard it’s amazing the skins don’t split. “Living in the Future,” from the new CD, begins. And although Taylor Goldsmith wrote it more than a year ago, it’s exactly the song for right now. He’s done it before. It’s why we’re here: Dawes matters.
The lyrics:
I know all of my exits
I’m always plannin’ my escape
It’s the most aggressive symptom
Of this collective phantom pain
And the more that you ignore it
The more it makes you go insane
Just look around
It’s the battle of the passwords
It’s the trumpets on the hill
It’s that constant paranoia
It’s the final fire drill
And if you won’t sing the anthem
They’ll go find someone else who will
They’re crackin’ down
We’re livin’ in the future, so shine a little light
It may not make it any better, I’m just hopin’ that it might
I’m not talkin’ ’bout forever, how ’bout just gettin’ through the night?
We’re livin’ in the future, so shine a little light
I’m always lookin’ over shoulders
Not knowin’ what I’m lookin’ for
Now that the feelin’ someone’s watchin’
Isn’t just a feelin’ anymore
Now that both sides of the aisle
Are this good at keepin’ score
We’ve crossed a line
There’s a madness to the method
There’s a market for the fear
It’s that dance out on the razor’s edge
The wolf held by the ears
It’s the man behind the curtain
It’s the way of our frontiers
Since the dawn of time
We’re livin’ in the future, so shine a little light
It may not make it any better, I’m just hopin’ that it might
I’m not talkin’ ’bout forever, how ’bout just gettin’ through the night?
We’re livin’ in the future, so shine a little light
And the video, a pale version of the blast of sound in a small room on a hot night….
In a sad, dangerous time, Dawes is a little light.
