SandersPalooza 2020
Song Diary #6: Remembering the Bernie campaign via Dar Williams, Bon Iver, Bob Dylan, and The Strokes
Welcome back to the Tracks on Tracks DIARY, an unpredictably recurring feature in which someone shares what they’ve been listening to lately while … Doing a Thing. Cooking. Running. Writing. Just like normal Tracks essays, Diaries focus on how music and life intertwine — but in a more bite-sized format.
Today: What I’ve been listening to while thinking back on my time volunteering for the Sanders campaign.
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The recent temporary injection of some excitement into Democratic primary politics had the effect of sending me back to the Winter and early Spring of 2020, when I spent more time than I ever would have anticipated (which ultimately wasn't very much time, in the scheme of things) volunteering for the Bernie campaign. These are memories dense with musical associations, and I've found myself bringing some of the songs back into rotation.
ToT Diary #006: Bernie 2020 Memories Edition
Dar Williams: ‘New York is a Harbor’
Years ago, on vacation in Wisconsin, my wife and I stumbled into seeing Williams play in a small-town community center and I fell in love with this loungey piano nunber. To me it perfectly evokes the particular atmosphere of cities in morning, when their full machinery has yet to roar into life. This has remained the case even as I've noticed that there are actually more lyrics about night than morning. To me, the vibe is 100% “walking in half-light among towering buildings, knowing you’re surrounded by millions of people and all their struggles and dreams, but still somehow feeling that you’re alone, getting a glimpse of a secret world with its own rhythms and enchantments.” It made the perfect soundtrack for driving at dawn to downtown Chicago to catch an Iowa-bound bus of campaign volunteers, co-conspirators I hadn’t yet met and soon enough would never see again. Of course, it also helps that lots of the lyrics are about working New Yorkers’ battles for dignity in the face of capitalists who would rob it from them. ✹
Bon Iver: ‘The Times They Are a-Changin,’(live in Clive, Iowa)
I’m sure I'm not the only person who has always liked a lot of the folky protest music of the Sixties while feeling more than a little sealed off from the political charge that I know it once carried. So often, our mythology of the Sixties becomes a barrier that makes it hard to connect with the era’s major artifacts: all we see/hear is “The Sixties.” I've always enjoyed “The Times They Are a- Changin," but had never been truly moved by it until the night I watched the livestream of Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver) singing it at a Bernie rally. Now that the Democratic Party has basically made its peace with Bernie (in part thanks to his assurance that he won’t run for president again), it’s hard to remember how much mainstream political punditry circa 2020 dismissed him as a non-starter spewing impossible/irresponsible ideas that would never connect with any “real” people. Watching the livestream on my laptop, I celebrated my confidence that they were wrong by singing along: Don’t criticize what you can’t understand! Even through the screen, I could feel Vernon’s performance feeding off (while also being fed by) the audience’s sense of possibility and hope. It was like hearing the song for the first time. ✹
The Strokes: ‘New York City Cops’
Another BernieSanders.com livestream memory: watching The Strokes play a big New Hampshire rally with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cynthia Nixon, and Bernie himself. There was something hilarious about the juxtaposition of The Strokes (disaffected downtown cool) and Bernie (uh, not that); to this day, I’m extremely curious as to whether he listened to any of their set that night, and if so what he thought about it. When they launched into “New York City Cops,” (they ain’t too smaaaa-aaart) I couldn’t decide what to think. In 2001, the song had been cut from their first album, yet another post-9/11 genuflection to “law enforcement.” Had things circa 2020 really changed so much that the song was now playable at a presidential rally? Part of me was delighted: here was history moving forward (even just one silly inch forward), old pieties getting chucked out the window at the speed of rock’n’roll. And part of me was afraid the song would get Bernie in trouble. It feels awfully long ago now. Livestream footage of this performance is available, but it’s not amazing. ✹
“It’s just an energy drink!”
“Oh, our apologies, just an energy drink. Happy new year!”
<3 Dar Williams <3 <3 <3