Michelle Shocked
Live at the CSPS Hall, Cedar Rapids, IA
Monday, May 14, 2012
It has been nearly a quarter-century since Michelle Shocked
has been on my radar, and I imagine for many fans, fair-weather though we may
be, Short Sharp Shocked remains as
their first and only foray into her body of work.
But Ms. Shocked’s sophomore record is such a significant
release that even after 25 years, I am still interested on where her troubadour
Converse All-Stars has taken her. So when Michelle stopped by my community on
Monday night, I determined that “Anchorage ”
was a brilliant left-field smash that required me to attend.
Dressed in those black high tops, Michelle shows some of the
age of the years in her face, but her body bounds around like the youthful
version. And the fight is still there: white t-shirt, tight black jeans, an old Bob Dylan
conductor hat, and a red bandana around her neck with the word “Occupied”
prominently printed across the front. She came prepared to talk some dialogue
about the 99% movement-a cause, which got her, arrested during a protest in Los Angeles last November (she told the pigs her name was Michelle 99)-but
thankfully she brought an acoustic guitar on Monday night and someone left behind a nice piano
for her to play around with, making the evening more than just a political
event.
On that second effort, Michelle is seen being choked by
someone ironically hired to serve and protect on the cover of Short Sharp Shocked. He did neither in Michelle’s
case, but the startling image makes it one of the most powerful covers in the
past quarter-century, and her East Texas ease
belies a strong woman who can back up her convictions with potent words and
intimidating vocal range.
The performance took place in the CSPS Hall, a century old structure next to an
old firehouse, both of which took on extensive damage from the 2008 flood. Finally,
some life is coming to the downtown area in between pockets of unrecovered devastation
and an obvious appearance that something indeed ran clean over the landscape.
This was my first visit to the restored center, which
features a nice stage in an auditorium upstairs, perfect for artists who may
not be familiar that there is a market for this out in the heartland.
For Shocked, she nearly filled the area, but the layout was
very informal and Michelle used a platform in front of the stage for her acoustic
set, bringing her even closer to the audience. I got there late, and as I was
being hushed over to a seat, I noticed that she had captured about a half-dozen
patrons from the audience and was wrapping up an impromptu version of “This
Land Is Your Land.”
I wasn’t prepared for an evening of Woody or audience
participation (more on that later), but being blessed with perfect timing, she
set on to a set of obligatory favorites, most of which came from Short Sharp Shocked.
Shocked provided an update to “Leroy” and his wife from “Anchorage,”
with the narrator now a grandmother and Leroy’s job bringing them down to
Montana. Shocked mentioned that she drove from their place in Billings to then
drive to Omaha and then to Cedar Rapids,
treating the couple as if they were long-lost friends of us in the audience,
which they were in a way. “I look like an old housewife,” admitted
Shocked during the song’s sudden self-realization.
I couldn’t help but thinking that, for all of her talk of
turning 50 and growing old, Michelle Shocked is still doing things her way and
does not seem one to bow to authoritative demands. That’s probably farther from
the truth for most people who age, some who even must be taking steps of
complacency as they approach what’s left of their retirement.
There were some moments of nostalgia, thinking back on the
guy who stood her up at senior prom and adding a few licks towards the
backwoods culture she calls her leveling point. But there was no condescending
tone and she seemed to bend over backwards for us to sing along, and to engage
when the discussion turned to foreclosure or what the occupy moment stood for.
Just when you felt that you had your fill of progressive
dogma, Shocked announced that she’d be back to lead a brief forum on the topic,
after she called her boyfriend on the phone and played three new songs before
the intermission.
No joke. Shocked grabbed her phone and called her boyfriend
David Willardson just as she sat down to the piano where she began explaining
the large portraits behind her. Each one began as a painting by David, followed
by an incredible muse they created over Michelle, which in turn created the
song. At first, the entire “hold the phone up to the microphone” bit got
somewhat uncomfortable. After a while, Willardson on the other end just became
another character in the community, offering a few insights to the painting
while Shocked gave her musical rendition. She had high praise for Mr.
Willardson, even suggesting (with him still on the phone) that she was
expecting to be married by the end of the year, a decision she made while
hearing the refrain of a sermon in her head, encouraging her to do the right
thing with her relationship.
With the intermission ending, Shocked continued talking to
David on the phone before ending the call and leading the now reduced crowd on
a discussion of the Occupy movement. For those that were left, if I may use
profiling tactics, none of them looked like the housing crisis took much out of
them, and indeed, which Shocked pressed the crowd for personal accounts, no one
raised their hand to testify.
Shocked quickly got the sense that it may be our polite
Midwestern demeanor, but I think that none of those in attendance had anything
to add to the discussion, even when most seemed to be in perfect harmony with
her progressive ideals.
You could tell that the momentum she was trying to muster up
was merely glossing over the fans that stayed to hear just a few more songs and
a few more tales of East Texas .
For me, the moment came during “Graffiti Limbo,” another Short Sharp Shocked tracks, this time
extended and with bonus footage. “You wanna hear the long version or the edit?”
she asked, leading the audience to naturally respond for the former. What we
learned was that the evidence the corner lost in this 1988 account of the death
of graffiti artist Michael Stewart, was in fact Michael’s eyes.
The original song only suggested something was lost, but the
retelling plays up the ”justice is blind” irony of this case that never did
find the accuser.
“To serve and protect.”
It was a pretty poetic moment, if you let the words sink in
a bit. You may have even found a correlation between the content and what
happened in our town just a few days prior, when a man was placed in the back
of a Cedar Rapids
squad car and was unresponsive when he arrived at the jail.
His family just made the decision to take him off life
support.
This kind of thing makes me grateful that Shocked is still
out their raising a stink. It’s reassuring to know as well that her stink still
sounds pretty good. The new songs found an emotional depth and a sense of
challenging herself by adhering to a new idea of combining song-cycles with her
boyfriend’s work, even adding more musicians to the process for an entire
piece.
But even armed with just an acoustic guitar and that underrated
voice, Shocked can hold her own quite well and would be the first to admit
that all of this is “Just one woman’s opinion.”
4 comments:
You get super extra punk rock points if you know the band that she borrowed the Short Sharp Shocked cover from.
M.D.C.!!
Nope.
Chaos U.K. I guess they are kind of obscure. I do remember being surprised when I saw her use it.
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