Sonic Youth is Dead. Long Live Sonic Youth.

Spirit Desire – Jennifer Benningfield (2018)

            I am a Sonic Youth Lifer.  The skronkalicious foursome has been my favorite musical group for the past 30+ years.  As a part of my fandom, I have been a member of the Sonic Youth Gossip Forum for nearly the entire existence of the interwebs.  In that nebulous cul-de-sac I met and have befriended many a fellow Sonic Youth Lifer.  I have seen them grow up, rock out, and move on with their lives.  I have lost Sonic friends who passed too early (RIP Adam “atsonicpark” Cooley - http://directoradamcooley.angelfire.com/ ).  I was also exposed to some of the most creative, interesting, and downright bizarre people, all of them Sonic Youth nuts to one extent or the other.  One of these bad-asses is Jennifer Benningfield, or as she is known on the SY Gossip Forum, jennthebenn.  In 2009 she published her first book, No Setlist: Pieces of a Sonic Life, detailing her near-obsessive devotion to traveling for Sonic Youth concerts.  My review of that book is here: http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2017/06/rxtt-flashback-review-story-of-sonic.html .

            It is now 2018, Sonic Youth have broken up, and the individual members have moved on to new musical projects, as varied as one can imagine.  Jennifer Benningfield has released the follow-up to No Setlist.  The development of her writing voice and style are evident throughout, as the book is tighter, funnier, and in many ways more resonant than her debut.  Like before, the book is divided into sections detailing individual Sonic Youth concerts she attended, describes the moment she and her partner in crime, Patrick “pantophobia” Suddath learned of the imminent breakup of our favorite band, and finishes with her treks to various post-Sonic Youth concerts.

            If it was inspiring to me to read Ms. Benningfield’s initial love letter to the Youth, it was even more amazing to read this new book, appreciating the growth and maturity of writing that has allowed Jennifer Benningfield to submit her short stories to various hard-copy and online publications.  While I do not personally know her, having had little interaction with her besides the Sonic Youth Gossip Forum (and the Instigator Fantasy Football league which I run every year.  Jenn’s team is Snoopy’s Smash Squad, and anyone who knows her knows she has a near-fetishistic fascination with Charles Schultz and the Peanuts gang), I am so proud of this digital friend for grinding away, for continuing to write and submit, even though the rejections and tough times can seem never ending.  The band is very lucky to have someone such as her as a fan.

            One of the little oddities that I found endearing in this book, is the way that, as a super-fan, Ms. Benningfield describes the journeys taken to the shows, the people she meets and stays with, the long-distance friends she connected with, the fearful walks through unfamiliar neighborhoods in search of a pre-show meal, and everything that goes into attending rock shows.  I myself have attended countless hundreds of not thousands of rock shows, and these little details are the ones that actually make the occasions memorable, apart from the musical performances themselves.  There is a huge difference between going to a big, national touring show at a giant arena, and going to a small touring act performing at who-the-fuck-knows-where.  It is more personal, more intimate, and if you are one of the early arrivals, like Ms. Benningfield likes to be, you can be in the FRONT ROW!  (I never ever stand in the front row.  I am 6’2” tall, and no one likes my ass blocking their view.)

            Sonic Youth is no more.  The Sonic Youth Gossip Forum is creaky and increasingly less populated.  The Sonic Lifers have had to move on.  Our favorite band, the band that never even sold 250,000 copies of any release, that taught so many of us what noise as Art was, and the possibilities inherent in that, will never come together in skronk again.  All we have are our memories, and thanks to the mind and work of SY Lifers such as Jennifer Benningfield, we can all share in our collective Sonic Joy.  SONIC LIFE!

(This book can be downloaded and read here: https://trapperjennmd.blogspot.com/2018/07/spirit-desire.html)

A Year in the Life of an NFL Offensive Lineman

Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer – Jerry Kramer, Dick Schapp (1968)

            I have loved the sport of American Football, specifically the National Football League, ever since I was a youngster.  It was one of the first “American” things that I fully embraced after my family moved to Houston, Texas from Ponce in Puerto Rico.  I remember the bike I got for Christmas that year.  It was a Houston Oilers BMX-style bike.  I loved that bike!  The Oilers were my favorite team right away, even though it took me quite a few years to actually understand even the basics of the sport.  In fact, to this day I still watch games and learn something new nearly every single time.  The complexities involved have kept me deeply interested.  Even though I have loved football for over 35 years now, I never took much interest in reading about the sport itself.  I read magazine articles and articles online, but I never dug into the vast library of published work on American Football. 

            What I have seen countless times are any and all NFL Films programs put together by the Sabol family.  I learned the game’s history from these films.  I appreciated the stories about teams that won championships when my father was only a decade old.  I especially loved seeing the yearly re-runs that ESPN would air before the Super Bowl.  They consisted of 30 minute highlights of each Super Bowl leading up to the current one.  I saw the great Vince Lombardi and his Green Bay Packers win the first two Super Bowls.  I saw Broadway Joe lead the Jets to a guaranteed victory.  I saw the shots of what seemed to me to be grizzled old men, fighting it out on the gridiron for the championship.  These men were younger than I am now, but to a young kid or teenager, they were ancient-looking warriors!  I learned not only about the past greats, but also the lore of each team, of the league itself, from the Doomsday Defense to the Purple People Eaters.  I learned about players and teams from before the Super Bowl era.  I memorized the names of the great coaches and the great athletes, and I dreamed of seeing my team win the big one.

            Out of all those films, none made the impression on me that the Green Bay Packers’ films did.  There was only one reason for this, and that was Coach Vince Lombardi.  Here was a man who seemed on the verge of a histrionic fit, screaming at his men, shouting about their mistakes and errors, but his men all loved him, admired him, and would do anything to please the man.  He seemed, and still seems, like the epitome of a great coach.  His voice alone was thrilling.  In 1967, the Green Bay Packers won their second consecutive Super Bowl and their third consecutive NFL championship.  Coach Lombardi retired after that year.  In reading articles from sportswriters, they would sometimes quote a book by Green Bay offensive lineman Jerry Kramer.  Mr. Kramer was asked before the season began to use a tape recorder to take down his thoughts daily as the preseason and then the season progressed.  This is the book that resulted from those recordings.

            A wonderful aspect of this book is that it is purely episodic.  It is a nearly daily diary of the events that occurred in Packers training camp and during the season.  There are eleven positions on both the offense and the defense of a football team.  Mr. Kramer played Offensive Line, specifically Left Guard.  That not only meant that he had to block the most fearsome lineman of the opposing team each week, but that he did so in obscurity and anonymity.  O-line players do not accrue stats.  They do not touch the football.  Their work is not glamorous and highly violent.  Anyone could have written a relatively entertaining account of what a quarterback’s season was like, or a running back, or a star defensive linebacker.  It is beautiful how this year’s tale is described by one of the men in the trenches.  This shines a light on a world that even a die-hard football fan sees little of and hears even less of. 

            Mr. Kramer discussed the doubts that come in training camp, whether he is willing to abuse his body once again, whether he can escape injury and make it through the whole season, whether or not he should just quit while ahead and leave the game behind.  He fears for the jobs of the marginal players, as the team rosters must be cut down by the start of the season.  He details life outside the game, and how little things like a group of teammates going to the local bowling alley to have a bottle of “pop” after brutal practices allowed them to feel human.  He describes his relationships with his teammates, with his coaches, and with the other NFL players.  He recounts his most fearsome opponents, men like Alex Karras and Merlin Olsen, huge brutes who were as fast and intelligent as they were massive and violent.  Greatest of all, he describes Coach Lombardi, with unflinching words.  He states flatly at times that he has hated no one more than Coach Lombardi, and then he describes how much love he feels for the man when Coach Lombardi breaks down sobbing after trying to announce his impending retirement.  He paints the full picture, and quotes the great coach liberally.  It is like being there in the locker room.  I got amped up at times just hearing Lombardi’s words echo in my head.  Having seen him on film so many times in my life, I carry his loud, Italian New Yorker voice in my brain with me.  I would guess anyone who worked for him or was coached by him has the same.

            One cool thing about the 1967 Green Bay Packers season is that the NFL Championship game that year was and is remembered as the “Ice Bowl.”  American Football has quite a few legendary games, each with their own nickname, and the Ice Bowl was one of the first I ever learned about from NFL Films.  The Dallas Cowboys and the Packers met in Green Bay and played a game in a temperature of 14 below zero, the coldest game on record at the time.  The game was evenly fought and was won at the last minute by the Packers who, after a masterful drive by QB Bart Starr, plunged into the end zone on a QB run with Jerry Kramer providing the lead block.  It was so cool to read Mr. Kramer’s descriptions of that day as I had seen it on video so many times. 

(*side note, in 2006 I drove by myself to Canton OH to see my old Oiler’s QB Warren Moon get inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame alongside other greats.  The day after the ceremonies, I headed to the Cracker Barrel to go get some breakfast and who should I be sitting next to but the great one himself, Mr. Bart Starr and his wife enjoying some fried eggs.  It was like eating with royalty for me.  I did not bother the man, but wow.)

            Now I am hooked on reading books about American Football.  I hope they are all this great.  Mr. Jerry Kramer went on to have a great career as a TV analyst for games, and wrote one other book also.  I am glad he wrote this one.  As he describes in the end, the one thing he would miss upon leaving the game would be his teammates, his coaches, the people who he lived and fought and suffered with.  That is what brought him back year after year. 

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )