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Wichita Lineman versions
Wednesday, September 25 2002
setting: Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York
There are few periods in my life as distinctly framed as the golden-hued days of my childhood following the momentous move from suburban Lanham, Maryland to a farm south of Staunton, Virginia. I remember that the move happened on Good Friday, 1976, a day my then-best-friend Jenny Mothershead tearfully insisted had been incorrectly named. During this period, I experienced a seemingly endless series of shocks to assumptions I'd formed about the world. Mind you, these reactions weren't restricted to the naïve, inexperienced likes of me; I noticed that even my world-weary parents were reacting to these changes and undergoing dramatic changes themselves. Since we suddenly were without a television, my father (who is something of a news junkie) was now listening to a lot of radio, and this meant a huge increase in my exposure to trends in popular music. This was at least a year before he discovered public radio, and so the AM radio was mostly tuned to stations that played various pre-disco pop songs and crossover country hits. Among these were "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot, "Summer Breeze" by Seals and Crofts, "Let 'Em In" by Paul McCartney, "Afternoon Delight" by Starland Vocal Band and, of course, "Wichita Lineman." Until Mikila played it the other night on the O'Connors jukebox, I'd more or less forgotten about "Wichita Lineman." I suspect Mikila herself is a bit too young to have any sort of nostalgic reaction to that song. That she is familiar with it at all is a testament to her probingly eclectic musical interests.
Today, taking a cue from an idea Gretchen had proposed for a radio show, I used KaZaA to download a whole collection of covers of "Wichita Lineman." The artists ranged from Michæl Stipe to Dwight Yoakam. I then played them, one after the other, trying to decide which one I liked best. It came down to a dead heat between the original Glen Campbell version and a somewhat more-countrified version by Wade Hayes. As evidenced by the sheer number of covers, the Glen Campbell version is a timeless and highly-influential classic. There's a hard-to-top sincerity to Campbell's voice. And the orchestration, cheesy though it is, makes perfect sense in this context. You could call "Wichita Lineman" a country "Nights in White Satin," though with far better lyrics. I love the way the song interweaves the day-to-day technical issues of a powerline repairman with cringe-inducingly over-the-top romantic sentiment. Compare that to such groundless contemporary schlock as "A Moment Like This." Wait, it's all starting to make sense, even if it doesn't suggest forward progress for this would-be retro-empire. George W. Bush is to Jimmy Carter as "A Moment Like This" is to "Wichita Lineman."
Tonight I was coming home from a computer housecall and I ducked into a bodega to pick up a forty of malt liquor. I was many blocks from the usual bodegas I patronize, and this meant that I was presented with a different selection of forties to choose between. I selected a Colt 45, since this brand is impossible to obtain in my neighborhood (where "g thang" is more a reference to "gentrified" than "gangsta"). For some reason I'd always thought Colt 45 bottles contain 45 ounces of brew, but I was wrong. They're straight up forty ouncers, just like Old English or St. Ides.
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