Ruminations

Let’s Barry the Hatchet

by Dan Kaczmarski

The Cornell study was the last straw.   Its goal was legitimate enough–to gauge how much other people really notice us when we commit what we’re certain is a faux pas.

But it was the methodology that pushed me over the edge.  Scientists made students wear Barry Manilow T-shirts in front of their peers.  According to “The Week” magazine:  “The mortified students expected to be relentlessly mocked and to suffer a loss of status.”

Enough is enough.  I’ve reached the stage in life where it’s time to be honest.  I own a Barry Manilow’s Greatest Hits CD.  Before that I owned a Barry Manilow cassette, preceded by a Barry Manilow vinyl album.

Well, technically, the album belonged to both my wife and me, although in a custody battle I don’t think she would have mustered much of a fight.  She covered for me for years, but we both knew it was mine.  It was our little secret.

As I near 60, the fatigue of living a lie is wearing me down.  Increasingly, I find myself listening to Barry with others in the room or the car.  Their responses are predictable, for apparently Barry Manilow is to pop music what Richard Nixon was to the U.S. presidency.  Even if you don’t know much about him, you know enough to know you’re supposed to ridicule him.

To a certain extent, that’s understandable.  It would have been better if “Copacabana” had never escaped.  But surely the ’70’s music scene would have lacked something integral without “Weekend in New England.”  And we should be forever grateful to “Mandy” for knocking “Kung Fu Fighting” off the charts.

So I’m taking a stand and offering charter membership to “The ABC Club.”  It’s a fraternity for men willing to let the chips fall where they may.  Men who are tired of turning down the radio at stoplights.  Guys who pack enough testosterone to rise up and shout “ABBA, BARRY, AND THE CARPENTERS RULE!!”

Please, someone join me here or I’m going to feel a little foolish.

The must be another guy out there who owns the “ABBA Gold” video.  Back in the ’70’s, I didn’t know much about the group except that they put out a new song every couple of months, were Swedish, and were somehow married to each other.

About 10 years ago, I bought my wife the video–a collection of the group’s greatest hits, for her to jog to indoors.  The rest is history.

You know how it goes.  You walk through the room while your wife is running, the music triggers memories, you notice that Agnetha is kind of hot.

I’ve since viewed the tape, oh, more than a few times, usually while laboring on the stationary bike in our basement.  The videos are pedestrian by today’s standards.  Mostly they involve the foursome singing, dancing demurely, or gazing into each others’ eyes.

But I’m hooked on the buoyant beat and the innocent lyrics, and I try to imagine the lives behind the youthful faces–the hopes, the aspirations, the divorces to come.  Agnetha, the blond, may be sexier, but you wonder if Anna-Frida, the brunette, might not be more fun.

Inevitably, the time of the bike beeps and it’s back to the present. To an angrier world where shock-jocks rule, rock is angst-laden, and rap is vicious.

Although Barry and the Swedes have long been secret pleasures, faced with a choice I’d have to surrender them for my “Carpenters Classics” CD.

It’s hard to be flippant about the Carpenters.  We all owe Karen and her brother a lot.  For one thing, they introduced many people to the word “treacly,” which showed up often in critics’ reviews.  The accepted wisdom is that brother Richard smothered his sister’s talent, shackling her to syrupy ballads.  Noted music critic Dave Barry nominated “Close to You” as one of the worst songs ever.

But would we really trade “Superstar” to hear Karen Carpenter singing scat, country, or hip-hop?  Her range, timbre, and phrasing were perfectly suited to the Carpenters’ hits.  She was less a diva than the girl you could picture yourself living with 10 years down the road.

But guys and Carpenters aren’t supposed to mix.  When I requested their greatest hits as part of our family Christmas gift exchange.  my sister-in-law waited for me to finish the joke.  Even my wife kind of squints at me strangely when I play the CD.

So what do you say, guys?  We don’t we get together and take a stand.  We can start small, by cranking up the volume on the soft-rock stations.  Then we can move to humming a few bars of “Dancing Queen” in the elevator.  Until finally, we can sing out in the hallways, letting the world know, with one deep voice, “Looks Like We Made It.”

T-shirts are optional.