5/5
Sob Core.
Laugh now, sob later. Catching the 'Last Train Home' conducted by John Mayer and its locked down video quarantined in Union Station (similar to this year's Regina King hosted Oscar's like 'One Night In Miami') was always going to be my song of the Summer and therefore year. Because even this Christmas, 'tis the season. Just like the 'Continuum' classic album man's latest LP 'Sob Rock' was going to be for the record because of it's 80's porn. Cry me a river like Timberlake or Bublé. I'm sorry Tyler! But this is my favourite creation. What else can you expect for an 80's baby like me taken back to the future with a haircut still stuck in that past (what's left of it anyway)? A man so obsessed with the videotape nostalgia of 'Stranger Things' like he was the time he went to New York in the pre-COVID Summer of 2019 for the fourth of July fireworks to coincide with the independence day themed (no, not just welcoming aliens to earth) third season of 'Things'. Set not only in the year, but the month I was born in 1985. I was excited as the New Yorker watching the premiere of the then new 'Spider-Man' sequel ('Far From Home') next to me (again pre-corona) when in the movie Spidey actually landed in front of the cinema adjacent to Madison Square Garden that we were actually watching the movie in ("HA! He's outside!"). Mayer's times gone by mesmerizing 'Sob Rock' guaranteed not a dry eye in the mothers basements of those still living in their second childhood. Missing the good ole days like they do their hairlines. Now realising they're as old as Doc Brown. Great Scott! This was something you kids might not have got, but your parents for sure were always going to love it.
Synths scintillating you like a Springsteen 'Human Touch', the on fire 'Battle Studies' of this young pretender heading through a tunnel of love to lucky town had everything you could want from the hair spray days of perms and mullets. From 'Shot In The Dark' videos that rotary phone dialled up references to that revered time and staring through windows of rain clichés. Or glass imitations like our 'Friend' Joey Tribbiani when he broke up with Chandler. Even the sports car riding commercial campaigns drove this motion home like a cassette into the tape deck. You just had to pop in this pop art throwback. But for all the sobs, nothing beat running for that 'Last Train' like chasing after the carriage your lover departs on (bye, Chandler). That was until the 'I Don't Need No Doctor' live legend prescribed a whole new take of this heartbreak warfare form of transportation. The 'Ballad Version' of 'Last Train Home' and its accompanying studio session video even instrumentally has an intro like something straight out of an era genre sitcom (word to 'WandaVision'...check your TV guide, but I'm sure you tuned in). But when this song gets going in live from the studio form, it really is on. You don't need another alternative like 'Good Love Is On The Way'. As Mayer brings back more solos in vogue than Destiny Child break-ups. Strike a pose, axeman. Even if you are a bassist like that 'Seinfeld' intro. Sideline, true story; I've been watching that show so much on the FIRST train to work that I'm having nightmares of Jerry axe-murdering me with that bloody bass whilst screaming, "THESE PRETZELS ARE MAKING ME THIRSTY!" I know that's the 90's, but have you seen those fashions? "Is this still CNN?" Clearly it took us a minute to leave like visiting our family for the holidays (if only. Miss you, my closest).
That old thing comes right back as Mayer sings the lyrics, "If you wanna roll me/Then you gotta roll me all night long/And if you wanna use me/Then you gotta use me till I'm gone/I'm not a fallen angel, I just fell behind/I'm out of luck and I'm out of time/If you don't wanna love me, let me go/I'm runnin' for the last train/I'm runnin' for the last train home." Words that carry you home with so much more meaning drawn out like long drives. And boy are they drawn out. Its like how Jamie Foxx 'Straight Out The Foxxhole' described it in church. The difference between black and white singers when it's time to devote, 'Today Is Our Wedding Day'. Your average white version takes a standard three minute, minus the half hour of bowing. The black version? "Tooooodaaaaay is our wedding daaaaaay. Oh yes, it is." About 45 minutes according to Foxx. But act like you've got some sense like Jamie and see that John has soul too like a Pixar picture. He could even stretch that out like calisthenics to the next evening. Even if he was told to "shut the f### up" in a barbershop on 'Chappelle's Show' when his guitar was used as a litmus test, social experiment for the effect of music on people from stripping in the office, to fighting in restaurants. Just wait until Dave breaks out Questlove and some Spanish piano. But the 'Bittersweet' with Kanye singer who also told Common to 'Go' repeatedly just be's over the rails of one of his most revelatory. The music is having such an effect on him, he's playing possessed. There's a bit in his break were the solo is so good he starts talking to himself and looking at his guitar like it was a cute dog and he was patting it like, "there's a good boy". Add his piano man like Billy Joel shaking his head in unison to John like a puppy too and this is all love like heart and soul across these electrified strings. All before the climax of what looks like he's going John Lennon 'Cold Turkey'. What better way to put the stamp on an 80's album than to bring the most epic, excellent instrument back to today like Bill and Ted for all you wild stallions? Even if you did miss the previous 'Last Train Home', like waiting all day and then two come at once, it seems like there was another, just right behind. Roll that! TIM DAVID HARVEY.
No comments:
Post a Comment