woe is me

Self-pity is a trusted friend.

Self-pity is a warm muffler in the icy kiln of an emotional winter.

Self-pity is comfort invented in the wake of apathy.

And, it's also a rock-and-roll tradition.

Self-pity and rock songs go hand in hand. They are more than just kissin' cousins-- they are a couple, a pair, a duo. There's a relationship there.

Some of the best songs ever recorded were selfish laments. What is the blues if not the moaning and complaining of Southern blacks? Even when Whitey co-opted it, they kept the blues themes, although in their hands it sounded more like adolescent whining than authentic blues.

No matter. By the time Elvis touched rock-and-roll, it was strictly the domain of teeny-boppers and kids, an audience ripe with acne and liberal doses of self-pity.

That's why the theme of unrequited love is just as popular as ever in pop music. There's nothing more doleful and dew-eyed than pining for the one who left you for another.

There's a romanticism to it.

As the Wolf Man told me the other night as he and I attempted to talk to girls at a bar in NoHo, "I kinda like feeling like shit over this girl."

Although I wouldn't agree totally-- for me it is painful and debilitating and inspires great anger in me --I am aware of the toll it takes upon me, and how other girls sense it, and are maybe even drawn to it. They might look at me and think, "Oh, you poor thing. She must be a fool to not care about someone as nice as you."

And the cycle of self-hatred digs itself deeper underneath my skin, because I know that the sweet girls who want to pity me are wrong, completely wrong. And yet, there they are, trying to make me smile again.

That's self-pity. That's rock-and-roll.


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Name a song, any song.

"I Fought The Law" by Bobby Fuller. The singer ends up in jail, but he had a good reason to do it: "I needed money 'cause I had none..." And he certainly didn't do it for love, yet we find him thinking (after the fact) about how good his baby was to him... Apparently not good enough, however, to keep him from a life of crime.

"Long Tall Sally" by Little Richard. Now there's a song that doesn't contain any self-pity, you may be saying to yourself. It may be a tad racy, what with all the hints at incest in the lyrics, but certainly not a blues as we know it, right?

Then you check out the first line of the song: "I'm gonna tell Aunt Mary 'bout Uncle John \ He said he had the misery but he got a lot of fun..."

He said he had the misery? Sounds like self-pity to me. Little Richard, how could you?

Most Elvis tunes were intended to seduce women, but occasionally he gets weepy and teary-eyed, even behind such uptempo classics as "Return To Sender" or "Marie's The Name (His Latest Flame)". But the ultimate moment, perhaps the pinnacle of Elvis' self-absorption, is "You Were Always On My Mind", an incredible song with power and emotion on the surface that disintegrates into a cry-me-a-river-fest upon closer inspection.

"Little things I should've said and done \ I just never took the time \ but you were always on my mind..." Like that's supposed to make up for all the heartache, the hurt and the neglect? Oh, great, so you were thinking of me while you were treating me badly... How swell. THANKS A LOT, KING OF ROCK AND ROLL!

It's no wonder the Pet Shop Boys, who are adept at parodying such self-loathing sentiments, covered that song. Their droll delivery exposed it for the emotional chicanery it contained.

"Yer Blues" by The Beatles. It doesn't require any detailed research to prove that The Fab Four had a penchant for giving into their moodiness. After all, they loved singers like Roy Orbison, the Crown Prince of Misery Rock. But "Yer Blues" stands out even among woe-is-me opuses like "For No One" and even "I'm A Loser" because it is basically a declaration of one's intent to die.

Trace all this early rock all the way up to modern times, where people like Morrissey have long careers and "emo" is The Next Big Thing, and you see where I am going with this. It comes in cycles, and as we all remember the last time a musical genre wallowed in the mire so much was about a decade ago, when "grunge" had taken over the world and rockers decided not to smile or chase groupies for a while.


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Wolfie and I struck out big time but we made up for it by writing music. Actually, I'll give Wolfie credit: He actually tried. He walked up to a girl and tried to chat her up. She didn't reject him badly, but she made it clear she didn't want to talk to him.

I was proud of him. I told him not to worry. "This is our first time at this bar. Everyone probably knows each other to some extent. Then we come in, and it's obvious we are on the make. But if we were to come here regularly, after a while it wouldn't seem abnormal."

"But I don't wanna come here regularly," he said to me. "I just wanna get laid."

"You're in too much of a hurry," I said to him. "The watched pot, remember?"

"It's just easier to not think of her when I'm with someone else."

"Not so." And to prove it, I quoted from at least five different Smokey Robinson songs, to show that the game of laughing on the outside and crying on the inside was as old as the century from whence they sprang. "The Tracks Of My Tears" and "Tears Of A Clown" are prime examples, as they both contain the word "tears" in their respective titles.

I also quoted from X, whose song "Dancing With Tears In My Eyes" charts similar territory (it bears noting that "Dancing With Tears" was originally written by none other than legendary blues artist Leadbelly), as does "My Little Red Book", the Bacharach song that the late Arthur Lee and Love covered for their first hit single in 1966.

We didn't feel so blue after playing some music, getting high and talking way into the wee hours. We see it this way: We're artists, and we are pessimists, and we are also optimists and idealists, and we tend to go somewhat bipolar when our emotions get jumbled, and this is what causes people like us to bitch and moan and gripe... and create.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that I like feeling blue, but I'll admit that a part of me is so used to the rejection and pain by now that I sometimes miss it when it's gone.

And let's face it: When I'm happy, I just sit around and get fat and do nothing.

Here's a toast: To feeling like shit. All of us have to go through it, but some of us are better equipped than others to deal with it.