Voices, Joe

I am a morning person. I know that might seem antithetical to the personality that I've traditionally tried to cultivate, especially in my younger years, the go-hard partier who was down to stick around as long as the keg wasn't kicked. But it's ultimately a façade. I like the morning better. I like the stillness and the mystery of morning's quiet. Any time that you saw me partying at 4 AM (say, to visit Dunkin Donuts when it opened) was actually just a subconscious attempt on my part to reach that elusive tranquility of those early morning hours.

When I say "quiet" and "tranquility" and all that shit, I'm not speaking literally. I'm also not one of those people who gets cranky if it's too loud. I think of the early morning's serenity as more of a blank slate, tabula rasa to impose my own emotions upon. That's really what attracts me to it. It's not noise, per se, more so distraction. The early morning hours ask: how do you feel right now? And the early morning hours insist: I'm all ears.

It is under this rickety framework that I must insist upon the following: Hall & Oates is morning music. Don't laugh! I'm being serious! You motherfuckers have in the past described Record Club music as "good for" any number of monotonous tasks and chores around the house or office. Let me have this. I say it because I mean it, and because the morning requires an answer: Hall & Oates hits better in the morning.

It is possible that the music fits the context ironically. But the morning does not ask for sincerity. It's okay if this upbeat, cheesy music provides a humorous juxtaposition to the stillness of the morning. It fits because it fits, irony or not.

Like, okay, think about this past Monday morning. I walk out the front door (late) to the zombie movie of a city that always plays reel-to-reel after a particularly gutting sports loss. I am alone on the walk to the bus stop, and I am alone on the bus, and honestly I'm shocked that there was anyone on the El. But so, there I am, a quiet dark Fox Chase morning, and nothing hits better than "How Does It Feel to Be Back." Irony, sure. This is some corny ass '80s duo doing their best Bruce. And yet! It hits me just right. The morning asks me how I feel. I felt depressed, empty, lacking; now I feel something else entirely. Hopeful, maybe. How does it feel to be back in the arms of a city that always lets you down? Good. Feels good because this is who we are. Self-deprecating Philadelphia, etc. etc. this isn't a sports blog and so you fill in the blanks from there but yeah, it works.

Before I give another example, let's emphasize here that when I call Hall & Oates "corny" or "cheesy" or whatever, I'm not saying that as an insult. Lame is cool when the hooks are there. "Kiss on My List" is such a good fucking song, and so catchy, and it's been on my head the entire week. But let's make no bones about it: corny. So fucking corny. The morning would perhaps ask why. I'm feeling like maybe I define things that are "old" and that don't jive with what social capital is valued in the present moment are the things I'd tend to call "corny." I'd also admit, in the darkest hour of the morning, that throwing around the word "corny" is ultimately a defense mechanism, that I tend to insult that which I do not understand, that maybe I'm jealous that I wasn't alive at the moment in time when Hall & Oates and "Kiss on My List" and all the other '80s shit was cool and liking it made you cool. Admit it: corny. Admit it: who gives a FUCK.

Okay, second example. I apologize in advance to anyone whom I might offend by sharing this anecdote. RC member Galia indicated that she thought my Sam Smith review was "romantic," and so I am here to douse that notion with a cold hard look at young male quasi-misogynistic horniness.

The example. It was the morning. It was multiple mornings, actually. Spring into summer, 2010. I had just met Pam. I was visiting her at her 13th St. apartment frequently. We were having sex. It had been a while for me. I felt good. I felt great. There was the underlying feeling that, yes, this was looking more and more like I had met the woman I was going to spend the rest of my life with. But there was also that great, interlocking feeling of: I am having sex. Really good stuff.

Oh, and also, I had just seen 500 Days of Summer, and it was that type of movie that has a large impact on an impressionable early-20s brain, just in terms of love and sex and all that stuff that's still percolating in the soupy male brain at that age. Those in the know know where I'm going with this.

There's that "You Make My Dreams" sequence. One of the all-time great musical scenes. What's-his-name is listening to Hall & Oates as he celebrates having sex with Zoey D. He does a little shimmy. He high-fives the mailman. He meets a cartoon bird. He smiles big. He just had SEX. But also he might be in love. The two aren't the same but they are connected. Doesn't matter in the moment. He's happy, and probably in love, and he is having sex. (Trivia time: the 500 Days of Summer director, Marc Webb, also directed the video for Fergie's "London Bridge," so it's possible he just has a knack for speaking to my very particular brand of teenage horniness.)

And so when I peeled myself away from the hottest woman I have ever kissed in my lifetime and I stumbled down the apartment building stairs and my sneakers hit the warm morning 13th Street pavement, you better fucking believe I knew what song to play on the ol' iPod as I made that half-mile walk to Market East. And you better believe, in that dim morning glow, that I was dancing down the fucking street. It was quiet out there, but not in here. The morning asks me where I'm at, and I sure as shit told it. I told it via the best goddamn morning music in history: Hall & Oates.

I know this is a cop out, but: there really isn't much more to say. At least nothing that I haven't already said to the morning. Hall & Oates is some corny ass musical duo from 1980s Philadelphia. You know their music. You know what it sounds like. But if you think it's too corny for you, I'll suggest that maybe you give it a shot at a different time of day. Because Hall & Oates thrive in those AM hours.

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5