Or so Mary Weiss sang at the Southpaw Friday night:
Kids, kids don’t know shit
They all want a hit
I don’t write hits
Actually Greg Cartwright wrote that song, entitled “Cry About the Radio.” It’s featured on Mary’s newish album Dangerous Game, her first LP since the sixties, and I don’t think it’s a hit yet, either. Introducing the number, the former lead singer of the Shangri-Las said that most music today sucked (“That’s a technical term”) and bemoaned the fact that kids making music today had no place to break in the way they did.
“FMU!” someone shouted, followed by more call letters: “”KCR!”
“Yeah, but back then you got to vote on the hits. Today they pick the music for you.”
It was an interesting crowd that turned out to see her: a few kids, actually; some older folks (I mean older than me) who had probably seen her back in the day (the Shangri-Las came from Queens; she even told a story about playing hooky from high school to get her hair done in Jamaica the day she was going to record “(Remember) Walking in the Sand”); and the odd rock critic (aren’t we all?).
I met Greil Marcus there; I had been to hear him lecture at Eugene Lang last week, talking about The Old Weird America, and here he was in Brooklyn, checking out Mary. She gives him a shout out on the back of her record and I asked him what was the connection. He said that he had been writing something about the attacks of 9.11 when someone told him that Mary had been working at the WTC that day, had been evacuated and seen the towers fall. When he asked her if she would like to talk about it for what he was writing, she declined. It was a story shared by thousands, she implied; what was so special about her?
That was part of the appeal of the Shangri-Las: they were the real girls next door, the ones with the bad boyfriends who had to leave school under mysterious circumstances. Introducing “Out in the Streets” she said it was her favorite of those old songs but she couldn’s say why. “Well, I could,” she added. “But it would take a whole afternoon.”
I got time, Mary.
Mary Weiss – unexpected icon, the housewife that roared, comeback queen – did something at Southpaw you so rarely see – she showed some class.
Sure, she was off a few notes – but there was something so completely right about seeing the woman who could have trademarked teen angst before almost anybody else, looking happy and alive as she belts on into her 60’s. Not THE 60’s, HER 60’s. There’s a message there, and an example.
-j