Crash Course, No. 13: Ezra Furman, You've Already Missed Too Much

Is there a trailer for Transangelic Exodus?

Believe it or not, this post will be the first time I’ve had to publicly manage gender pronouns (yes, I probably need to get out more). So, to both address it early and explain an editorial choice, Ezra Furman is a gender-fluid musician, and someone who has taken a very thoughtful approach to the entire question of how to identify. Based on what I’ve read, it was only this year (2019) that Furman started identifying as transgender.

As for the pronoun choice, I’ve read one interview from this year that used “he,” and another interview that used “she.” Next, there’s Furman’s twitter bio: “my pronouns: he/she/him/her.” More than anything else, however, I to take my marching orders from this direct quote (from “one interview” above; good one, too):

“Sometimes I wonder what there is to say about it. Or maybe I feel tired of obsessing about it, caring about how I said it, worrying about people’s reaction and such. My dream has always been that it could be a non-issue, or at least, as much of an issue as any cherished part of who I am.”

The Independent went with “he/his,” and I will as well for the remainder of this post. If Furman ever puts his foot down one way or the other, I’ll honor his choice. More than anything else, I find Furman’s specific gender identity the least interesting about him. Because I think he/she kicks 20 asses, dammit. And I think the world of his/her music…and, yes, I’d struggle with “him/her,” because, clunky, but I would still respect the choice.

OK, on with the rest of it.

Personal

As much as I shit on Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist, I owe them for a lot of my new crushes. They fed me Furman’s “Tell Em All to Go to Hell,” a screed of a song that layers garage-rock production on a classic 50s tune (as the garage-rock originals did). The vibe borrows from punk – a culture that’s very much part of Furman’s work – but, as he often does, he drops in a blast from a saxophone that gives the track another dimension. I loved it the first time I heard it, and tagged him as someone to go deep on in the future. The future arrived the day after Spotify passed on “Evening Prayer aka Justice” (great, yet challenging protest pop) and the lacerating, “Thermometer.” Both of those came off his latest, Twelve Nudes, by the way.

Crash-Course, No. 10: Daryl Hall & John Oates. Not Hall & Oates. A Little Respect.

It's still a stupid question.

Personal
If you grew up in the early 80s, you couldn’t avoid these two. At the same time, I might have bit a few dance moves from “You Make My Dreams.” It is very, very hard to lose the rhythm on that one.

A Little History
Daryl Hall and John Oates met very accidentally in Philadelphia, PA. Fate still had to throw them together at a late-1960s “battle of the bands” kind of event at the Adelphi Theater. They showed up separately, Hall with The Temptones and Oates for The Masters. When gunshots chased people from the event, Hall and Oates bumped into one another in an alley, introduced themselves, realized they shared enough inspirations and influences and, by every account I read, the rest was history.

They roomed together at Temple University, then various places across Philadelphia. One key person noticed them early – Tony Mottola, the managerial legend (who later married/managed Mariah Carey) – and they became his first act, and he their first manager. Atlantic signed them before they found their feet musically, or maybe just before they had the status to push-back. Atlantic connected them to producers, and fairly big ones (Todd Rundgren, I recognize, Arif Mardin, I don’t), and they churned out an album per year: Whole Oats (1972), Abandoned Luncheonette (1973), and War Babies (1974). The sound bounced between folk (B-side of Whole Oats, especially), soul, pop, and, by the time Rundgren got his hands in their production on War Babies, something closer to rock even...(gasp) hard rock. Nothing charted in the Atlantic years (“She’s Gone” did all right, and Minneapolis/St. Paul liked ‘em), and Atlantic dropped them after both they, and their fans couldn’t figure out what to make of War Babies. In an infamous-to-anyone-who’s-read-it Rolling Stone article in 1985, Oates offered this thought:

“That was our first test right there. It would have been easy to make Abandoned Luncheonette II. That would have set our entire career, but we didn’t do it. And people walked out of our concerts when we didn’t.”

When it comes to Hall & Oates, that sentence contains multitudes. Moving on…