Friday, May 26, 2006
Loretta Lynn, Richard Nixon, and the Wonders of American Culture
I’ve been imbibing a whole lot of Americana these past couple of days, and I couldn’t be happier. Really. First off, Loretta Lynn finally made it to South Bend on Mother’s Day. She had been scheduled for last Fall, but then a broken bone or two forced the rescheduling. Well, it was worth the wait. The first lady of country music has slowed down a bit, had to perform her songs sitting on a chair, and forgot the lyrics to a couple of her songs, but brother when she starts to sing she can really sing. I bet there’s not another 70 year old who sings as beautifully as Loretta can. Yes, she rambled a bit, and only played for an hour, but she threw herself into performing some of her old chestnuts, like “Honky Tonk Girl” and one of my favorites, “Your Squaw is on the Warpath,” with real gusto. Best of all, she did a couple of impromptu songs from her recent and great album, “Van Lear Rose.” I highly recommend this album for those of you who haven’t listened to her in years, or to those of you who shamefully don’t know what a national treasure she is. It’s just a great, rockin’ album. I’m quite partial to the duet she did with Jack White on the song “Portland, Oregon.” The song is just flat-out perfect and starts off with the great line, “Well, Portland, Oregon and slow gin fizz/If that ain’t love then tell me what is.” And it only gets better from there. It made me want to move out West and drink a certain drink.
Not surprisingly, the audience to this show was classic country demographics: white, working class, drinkers of Bud Lite, and smokers galore. More than a few had trouble navigating the steep stairs in the balcony at the Morris. Come to think of it, so did I. For the love of God, can’t they make the seats with a bit more leg room too? Yet, the audience was in good humor and primed for Loretta. I was a bit surprised, but pleased, to see an amazing amount of mothers and daughters at the show. What a nice Mother’s Day gift for both of them. And when I say mothers and daughters, you need to understand that the daughters must have been well into their 50s, so their mothers were getting on in years. But everyone got into the show. I’ll say this much about Loretta’s fan base—they may be hard-drinking, smoking fiends who are coughing up a lung or two, and generally a bit out of shape, but they know how to whoop and holler with the best of them when she came onto the stage.
As if to prove that America is too large to explain in one fell swoop, I saw another great show, and one that could not have been any more different. I convinced a bunch of friends to go to Chicago the other day to see the crazy and beautiful opera, “Nixon in China.” Yes, it’s a postmodern opera and there’s a bit of theory that informs the music. But forget all of that. This is a big, imaginative show that one just marvels at. You just have to believe me that when Richard Nixon reflected on how, he, the most famous anti-communist in the world, will soon be meeting the most famous communist in the world, and all he can do is burst into song and sing, “News, news, news-- has a kind of mystery,” I thought I had died and gone to the kingdom of heaven. It was that good.
Not surprisingly, the audience couldn’t have been any more different than the Loretta Lynn crowd: these were wealthy folk, smartly dressed, and who know the difference between a Burgundy and a Cabernet. Yet, they too loved their show and showed it with hearty laughs and handclaps. I bet some of them are even Loretta Lynn fans too. I also bet that if her fan base should ever see this opera they too would ponder why Nixon and Mao, Pat and Madame Mao, Kissinger and Chou En-Lai, all begin dancing the foxtrot while contemplating the vagaries of history in the Third Act of the opera. I’m not exactly sure why they did this, but the image and the music will linger with me for some time.