Roll Call Regret

By the time My Beautiful, Perspicacious Wife and I tuned into Night 2 of the Democratic National Convention from the safe harbor of our Chicago couch, they were already a few states into the roll call, meaning we had just missed DJ Cassidy playing “Edge of Seventeen” by Phoenician icon Stevie Nicks to herald the Arizona delegation but just in time to hear him soundtrack the Arkansas delegation with “Don’t Stop” by Nicks’s Fleetwood Mac, a nod to the first Bill Clinton campaign of yore. And that was generally how the roll call proceeded, with music to properly match each American state and territory. The District of Columbia, My Beautiful, Perspicacious Wife’s hometown, was scored to nation’s capital-native DJ Kool, and Florida got Gainseville’s own Tom Petty. Even states not scored to a native’s music, were scored to something appropriate, like Illinois being introduced via “Sirius” by The Alan Parsons Project, as if the Illinois delegates were the ’96 Bulls, or The B-52’s “Private Idaho” to accompany, well, obviously. I was getting excited about what they might choose for my native state of Iowa. And then DNC Secretary Jason Rae asked, “Iowa, how do you cast your votes?” and DJ Cassidy cued up “Celebration?” 

Kool & the Gang hail from Jersey City, of course, a good 938 miles or so from Davenport. True, Iowa does not have as many native recording artists to choose from as some other states, like Minnesota, which went with Prince, obviously, but could have gone with The Replacements, or Hüsker Dü, or Babes in Toyland, or what’s his face, Robert Zimmerman, but the Hawkeye State has enough. There’s Slipknot, the heavy metal band that formed in Des Moines, and released an album literally called Iowa. They’re no little thing, they’re big, so big that I once saw a kid wearing a Slipknot backpack in the Jardin of San Miguel de Allende in the central highlands of Mexico. There was also Glenn Miller, born in Clarinda, and “In the Mood” still slaps, as the kidz say. The folkier tendencies of beloved Iowa singer/songwriter Greg Brown might not have felt right for such a raucous affair, but hey, how about some of the stuff he produced with another Iowa boy, Burlington’s celebrated sideman Bo Ramsey, like the bluesy, groovy “Poor Backslider?” That would have fit right into the theme of the night of going forward, not backward.

 

If those native choices don’t move the needle enough, fine, the artists could have been appropriate without being Iowan. Why not an ode to Clear Lake and the Surf Ballroom with Buddy Holly’s “Rave On,” speaking of songs that still slap. As My Beautiful, Perspicacious Wife suggested, why not go with “Our State Fair” from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical? Aren’t we always telling people our state fair is the best state fair? And if that doesn’t rock hard enough, then go with “Urgent” by Foreigner, or “Roll with the Changes” by REO Speedwagon, as a nod to music you hear at the Iowa State Fair. Maybe they could have played “Flying High Again” by Ozzy Osbourne to commemorate the time he bit the head off a bat at Veterans Memorial Auditorium?

I got really upset with DJ Cassidy, and My (Poor) Beautiful, Perspicacious Wife can confirm, railing about how he didn’t do the research. Except it turns out this was not entirely DJ Cassidy’s fault. No, the New York Times reported that DJ Cassidy “worked with each state’s delegation to find a song that captured a spirit of ‘unity and celebration’ and had meaning to the state.” And that made me even more depressed. This is how the DNC Iowa delegates saw themselves and the state they were representing? As the most basic party anthem of all time? That in choosing to evince a sense of celebration they just picked the song literally called “Celebration?” As My Beautiful, Perspicacious Wife remarked, “What, was it down to this and ‘(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life’ by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes?” The only way this could have worked is if the Iowa delegation had enlisted the Farmer Tan Funk Band to record a “Celebration” cover and then played that. (The real Des Moineseans know what I’m talking about.)

Playing “Celebration” at a celebration is like playing Donna Summer’s “Last Dance” when it’s the last dance; it’s like the scene in “Bob’s Burgers” when presented with myriad ice cream choices, Regular Sized Rudy marvels, “Ooooooh, vanilla!”; “Celebration” is what AI would play if you asked it to choose a song. I would expect this from so many culturally uninterested Republicans but my God, you’re the DEMOCRATS. You’re supposed to be the ones who like art and culture! My native state is one where the right-wingers in charge are working hard to make art and culture bland and vacuous, and this is your chance to say our appreciation and understanding of art and culture runs as deep as anyone and what do you do? You serve up something as bland and vacuous as possible. Is this why Democrats never win elections in Iowa anymore?

(Did New Jersey choose “Born in the U.S.A.?” Yes. Yes, it did. I give up. “Land of Hopes and Dreams” was just sitting there.)