Flaming Lips – Convinced of the Hex (2009)
Somewhere in the upper reaches of a gaudy New York tower, Donald Trump is preparing for his second major U.S. presidential debate. It’s an unconventional debate prep, this much is clear. He is probably shouting at a cable-news channel. He is probably checking Twitter on his Android phone. I like to imagine that he is engaging in other monomaniacal rites, as well: practising his golf putt; dictating his memoirs; gorging on raw sea urchins.
But the truth is, Trump sort of seems as if he’s falling apart. It’s in the sniffle in his sinuses, the throbbing vein in his forehead, those 3 a.m. tweets. Likely, it’s his anger and narcissism. But perhaps he’s a man cratering out on a very long, very messy acid trip. I like to console myself sometimes with the fantasy that Trump’s not actually wicked – he just took some bad drugs. He’s got insects on the cerebellum and he’s taking it out on everybody else.
Let him listen then to Convinced By The Hex. Deep in his golden chambers, let the Lips’ psychedelic grotesquery scuttle across his follicles. The album this is taken from, Embryonic, seems psychically correlated to the Republican nominee: there are songs about evil, ego and powerlessness; a song about a Scorpio (presumably Hillary) and someone’s (small) trembling hands. There’s even a track about turning into a frog (Pepe?). Convinced By The Hex, the LP’s opening track, feels a little like a hazard warning and a little like a spell. Either way, it should presage a meltdown. We’ll pray for that – and for the United States to escape without casualty.
Bill Evans – Peace Piece (1958)
Meanwhile, at the Clinton residence, let’s imagine that they’re listening to Bill Evans. A piano music that neither fills nor spills over a room – it reveals it, note by note, fastens the light in place. Hillary’s sitting with a binder full of notes. Bill’s on the phone with some Canadians, talking turkey. Both of them feel Evans on the turntable, the way his meditation makes them better for having heard it, the way it seems to dull secrets or scour sins, bring the listener that half-inch nearer to grace.
Black Flag – Rise Above (1981)
As for the rest of the merry United States, away from the patricians’ drawing rooms: crank the Black Flag. After watching the first debate, punk rock was the only thing that got the dirty taste out of my mouth. I had just got back from seeing Carl Wilson interview Iggy Pop and I couldn’t help but wish that Pop was on the debate stage with the rest of them, shouting terse truths. Black Flag’s churn is not even as elegant as Pop’s, but they’re offering the right advice. Not to hate or to obey or to abandon hope – just to shake loose old habits and dream bigger dreams. The rioting guitars are optional.
Sean Michaels received the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel Us Conductors. He is the editor of the music blog Said the Gramophone