An infinite number of rockin' pop records can be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!
MATERIAL ISSUE: "Kim The Waitress"
No one can save us
In April of 1994, my wife Brenda and I had a short window for a vacation. We needed to be back home in Syracuse by the end of the week for a wedding; I was Best Man, so I kinda had to be there. It had been a rough winter, so we wanted to try to get away from Syracuse for a little bit. Brenda picked me up when I got out of work at 6 pm on Saturday, and we drove all night to get to Virginia Beach.
It was one of our most pleasant, most laid-back, most idyllic vacations. We had no agenda, just ample opportunity to relax. We rode bikes, we shopped, we ate, we walked hand-in-hand along the chilly beach, visitors in a quiet tourist town just beginning to wake up from its off-season slumber. During down times, she had a book to read, and I wrote notes for an article I was crafting for Goldmine. Sometimes people bicker, even people who love each other. There was none of that on this trip. There was only time for a shared, contented peace.
And I had the radio on. Of course. There was a great Adult Alternative station called, I think, The Wave. I remember two things about The Wave. One was a truly annoying Budweiser commercial, pitching Budweiser as "the alternative beer for alternative tastes." Yechh. Of greater importance was The Wave introducing me to a new song: "Kim The Waitress" by Material Issue.
I already knew Material Issue. I had the group's first two full-length CDs, International Pop Overthrow and Destination Universe. I quite liked "Renee Remains The Same" and the title track on the former, and had given the latter a not-bad/not-great review in Goldmine. In on-line chat groups, I'd encountered a few Material Issue fans, as well as some who were dismissive of Chicago's Phenomenal Pop Combo; I recall one woman who derisively and emphatically referred to them as "the Tissue." I may not have been the world's biggest Material Issue booster, but I dug 'em a lot more than she did.
Material Issue's version of "Kim The Waitress" sounded terrific on the radio, a brooding, simmering cautionary tale, teeming with sadness and regret, delivered with a peerless pop panache. I would later learn that it was a cover of a song written by Jeff Kelly, originally recorded by Kelly's group The Green Pajamas. Fans of The Green Pajamas have routinely referred to "Kim The Waitress" as "that song Material Issue ruined." We must agree to disagree on that point. To my ears, Material Issue took a quirky left-of-the-dial ditty and transformed it into a potential hit single, perhaps even a pop classic.
Maybe things would have gone differently if it had been the hit it deserved to be. Maybe not. Hit records didn't save Kurt Cobain. No one can save us. Material Issue frontman Jim Ellison killed himself on June 20th, 1996. Because commercial success had eluded Material Issue? Because he'd broken up with his girlfriend? Some other reason entirely? We'll never have any real clue. We only know one thing, again and again: No one can save us.
I wrote a suicide note when I was in eighth grade. It wasn't meant to be taken seriously, nor did I have any intention of carrying it out; it was intended as catharsis, and I only showed it to a few friends, emphasizing it as a...joke. Yes, that's it. A joke. I was weird. I was bullied. I was lonely. It wasn't a joke, because it wasn't funny.
When I was in high school, the father of a friend on my block killed himself. It was impossible to process that fact, impossible to think of words of condolence or comfort. Words failed. Nothing was ever said of it again.
In my senior year in high school, 1977, I wrote a short story about the death of a teen-aged square peg. It was disturbing. I meant it as, again, catharsis. I was dealing with teen emotions, and dealing as best I could. My perspective changed dramatically in the summer of 1979.
On the evening of Saturday, June 30th, 1979, my friend Tom stopped by my house for a quick visit. Brenda was also there, a guest from out of town for the weekend, our young romance already blossoming and solidifying. We listened to a little bit of Joe Jackson's Look Sharp! album, chatted briefly, and Tom left with the book he'd come to borrow from me, Something Happened by Joseph Heller. We said our goodbyes. I would never see him again.
Our phone rang the next morning, July 1st, around 7, 7:30, whenever it was. My Dad said it was for me. Hello? It was Tom's sister Tammy. She told me Tom was dead. Do you wanna know how it happened?, she asked. He shot himself.
I staggered from the kitchen, my eyes full, my Dad looking on, stunned, trying to find a way to comfort his youngest son. I stumbled into the bedroom, where Brenda had been sleeping, the same room where we'd listened to Joe Jackson sing "Sunday Papers" and Tom had borrowed a paperback just hours before. I broke down, sobbing, inconsolable, crying into Brenda's shoulder, just repeating, He was my friend! He was my friend!
And life went on. Over the next few years, at least two other guys I'd known in high school would make the same decision that Tom made. In later years, I knew someone else who made an attempt. I know of others who considered it. No one can save us.
The devastation inflicted by the suicide of a friend or loved one is incalculable. The anger and sadness, the misery and mystery, the nagging question of what we could have done to affect a different outcome. No one can save us. Those who survive carry that burden. But those who've departed are fucking dead.
I decided that I would never do that to the people I love, the people who love me. It's not that I was ever seriously contemplating doing myself in, nor am I one of those assholes who criticize the unfortunate souls who make that awful decision to end their own lives. Victims deserve respect and compassion, even if they're victims by their own hands. But I knew, in 1979, that I had to be strong enough to endure my first-world problems, my teen lament crap, my slings and arrows. To be or not to be? To be, God damn it. To be.
I walked away from the edge. I'm walking still.
Pressed lips and slender hips turning in my head
Writing poems in the corner booth that I'd die if she read
Seeing her in but a silver cross lying on her bed
No one can save us but Kim the waitress
Depression is real. It can't be ignored. It can't be reduced and dismissed, no matter how paltry or petty it may seem to those looking on. These feelings, whether born of a perceived lack of love or companionship, a gnawing dread, a faith in nothing beyond the numb certainty of our own shortcomings, an overwhelming sense of futility, or just our imagination running away with us, are capable of bringing each of us down permanently, with extreme prejudice. No one can save us. No one.
But we still try. The people we care for need us. We can't save them, sure. I guess. But that won't--can't--stop us from doing whatever we can. From being there. From listening. From supporting. From loving. From trying.
But she doesn't come around anymore
And that bothers me (I'm unhappy)
Yeah, it bothers me
Oh, I don't stand a ghost of a chance with her
She's pretty
So pretty
And that bothers me
"Kim The Waitress" is not about suicide. It wasn't even written by Jim Ellison, so it's folly to draw an indelible a line between that song and Ellison's decision to close his garage door, and to sit on his moped as toxic fumes swept him away from this life. But the song's melancholy aura fits. We can't talk about Buddy Holly without thinking of the plane crash. John Lennon's legacy is forever attached to his murder. And then there's Kurt Cobain, Ian Curtis, Robin Williams, Chester Bennington, Chris Cornell, Elliott Smith, and so many--far too many--others. Our memories of them are linked with the fact that each chose to kill himself. It's impossible for me to think of Material Issue, or to listen to Material Issue's music, without thinking of how Jim Ellison died.
No one can save us
Nonetheless: there is joy in this music. It's there, clouded in part by doubts and failures, weighted by the dull certainty of how the story played out in real life. It's still pop music, capable of lifting us and engaging us, perhaps even able to help us transcend some of the troubles we perceive, both corporeal and imagined. We can turn up the stereo. Maybe we can dance. Maybe we have to cry along with the saddest refrains, ache with the sagas of trusts broken and hearts shattered. Maybe we can live. Maybe we can choose to live.
Because no one can save us. We can only hope there will be someone, somewhere, who can help us figure out how to save ourselves.
"Kim The Waitress" written by Jeff Kelly, Half The World Publishing BMI
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