Bobby Conn

Bobby Conn “King For A Day”

from King For A Day (Thrill Jockey)

postglam  //Out Feb. 20

(orig. pub. between late Jan. to mid-Feb. 2007)

Folk music aside, both as coded work songs and Folkie Protest, there is a certain American musical tradition of flashy fun fertilized with fury, going back at least as far as Charles Mingus’s “Fables of Faubus,” and continuing via George Clinton’s intermittently experimental admixtures of exhortation and exhilaration.  (Not to mention his P-Funk multitudes yelling, “THINK! IT AIN’T ILLEGAL YET!” amidst the mists of intersecting cartoon galaxies, as they’re probably doing , on stage, at this very nanoo-nanoo-second). It’s hard to do, and Chicago prog-disco-rocker Bobby Conn gets points for trying. He also gets points trying to turn off autosnark, to provoke jaded culture vultures into really thinking and caring about how compulsive delusions of screwed-up public figures relate to greedy kings of the aisle seats, to “little folks like me and you,” as Randy Newman has ”Populist” demagogue Huey Long put in on Good Old Boys. Like Newman, Conn wants to demonstrate, to embody (with just enough cautionary signifiers of his serious intent) the enduringly alluring, manipulative appeal of stars, even or especially in their twilight.

This, of course, is  especially hard to do since 9-11, as hapless, sleepless Hollyweirdos have provided a surfeit of default “relief” from various other twilight struggles. It’s hard for even those whose talent lies in the eye of weirdness itself  to come up with compelling or even marginally acceptable messes of alibi pie in the face of luridly conventional outrage. It’s way too much for Bobby Conn to ask of himself. He just doesn’t have (or exhibit) the starpower, or the heart, to wallow in self-pity, guilt, and rationalization, and to make us care. He doesn’t really try, he just sounds dispirited, after a decade of indie, part-time rock’n’roll exploits: too many office jobs and too few polished knobs, or perhaps the reverse, or all of the above! “Too much is not enough” seems to be the underlying, queasily heaving theme. These songs are all based on personal experience, according to the press sheet, and, judging by the lyrics and interview quotes, as well as the depressive undertow of the music, he seems to be going through an extended period of transition, like many a foggy blogger. This lack of professionalism, of balancing personal expression and artistic correlatives, indicates that Conn’s not only short on charisma, he really may not have the basic musical talent to play King , even For A Day, either as a writer, performer or band leader. His band sure tries and his partner in life, the mother of his children, Monica Boubou, consistently plays a good electric violin, and sings a good lead on her one chance to so, “Mr. Lucky,” until Conn comes blaring and blearing in, and kills the momentum once again. Jon Steinmeier’s fluid keyboards also fall on stubbornly fallow, if not barren, fields of fudge.

Only once does Conn have a breakthrough, on “Punch The Sky,” which he says, is not autobiographical, and is spoken, not sung. So maybe he should be an actor, because this, brothers and sisters, is the truly rousing gospel of a certain real-life movie star, with a “science-fiction based religion, “ as Conn describes it in the press kit. Only here, at least on this album, does B.C. become the pie-eyed Pied Piper Of Love, who could lead us through a whole album of revelatory “revelation” and revels.  However, the track we are allowed to present for you today does have some attention-keeping lyrics, for a while, and maybe even a good tune (will somebody please cover this guy? Whole tribute albums has been consecrated to those with far less potential.) He’s a streetwise pirate, a Fagin to the boy thieves, with loot literally to burn, as he receives true blew tribute, while sinking down, down, down on “my cardboard throne.”  But as indicated in the bio bit above, he’s also a weekend warrior, and soon “back at my job, every Monday morning.” Yet still, this once, at least, the moment just passed  rises like a Golden Ass of his personal mythology. “I was King For A Day,” he exclaims, and Monica Boubou’s electric violin hums like beautiful new wings, born almost too late not to get stuck in the muck of good intentions.