1/28/08: White Town “Why I Hate Drugs” (1999)This isn’t some kind of Heath Ledger entry. We’re not even sure what killed him. In any event, there’s no particular reason to goof on the poor guy. We don’t really know anything about his politics—as opposed to those of River Phoenix, who ran around lecturing us about our evil selfish ways while financing L.A. drug wars. That creep deserved to die with a screaming Kelly Bundy over him.
Also in Ledger’s favor:
Brokeback Mountain remains hilarious.
Actually, we got to thinking of White Town while writing our annual recap of obituaries for
Black & White. (As you can
start enjoying here, although you’ll probably be seduced away by the other fine writers who don’t rely on intrusive politics.) One of our obituaries was for a deceased rock musician from a pretty good band called Hawthorne Heights. The original high concept was that Hawthorne Heights was so original that they even lost a young member through natural causes.
That’s the official story we fell for in the days after Casey Calvert’s death. As a
Black & White proofreader discovered, though, Calvert had died from a drug overdose. We should’ve known to follow up on our initial notes. Things got worse, though. We then learned that Calvert’s band mates didn’t even feel bad about having chastened anyone who might report that Calvert had a drug problem. His band mates followed up the coroner’s inquest by continuing to make all kinds of insipid excuses.
The only way to honor the band’s wishes is to agree that Calvert was a typical 26-year-old rock musician who’d come off a long depression and had also endured some excruciating dental surgery and then somehow accidentally ingested some opiates along with his anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication. But he didn’t have a drug problem, and thus speaks Hawthorne Heights.
Which brings us to Jyoti Mishra—he who is White Town. He’s a Communist. To his credit, though, Mishra is the only intelligent Communist that we’ve had the pleasure of interviewing. He’s bright, articulate, and maybe slightly insane in his happy vision of how eager the world is to share its riches with one another. Mishra’s no tool, though, and he enjoyed discussing the many shortcomings of American and European leftists. He was especially distressed at how the Left had somehow adopted decadence as an element of timeless cool.
Mishra was also an unlikely pop star. The India-born pop guy hit the UK charts in 1997 with the slightly gender-twisting “Your Woman.” White Town had been around for a while—properly debuting with 1994’s
Socialism, Sexism and Sexuality— but Mishra was already a one-man band at the time of his sole hit.
1999’s “Why I Hate Drugs” helps to explain why. It’s a lovely and solemn tune that should be required listening for all the pop stars who’ve turned music journalism into a dandyish deathwatch. The lyrics aren’t anything fancy, but (LANGUAGE ADVISORY) it’s a straightforward situation:
You’re living life fucked up every single day And now I can’t remember the last time you were straight You’re a joke, but no one’s laughing any more You’re the face that closes every open door I’m telling you, you’ve got to change I saw your boyfriend; he never wants to see you again And the sunglasses didn’t fool his friends You had a good thing there, the best it’s ever been But your new hip friends didn’t think he fitted in I’m telling you, you’ve got to change I don’t mind you stealing money from my house I’ve known you far too long for that to matter now But I will not take the lies and disrespect With all the things you’ve given, what you gonna get? I’m telling you, you’ve got to change You’re living life fucked up every single dayMishra really enjoyed when “Your Woman” allowed him to sign to a multinational entertainment conglomerate, and was just as happy to become a one-hit wonder. It was one major-label album and out for Mishra, before returning to his indie roots for
Peek & Poke—which is where you’ll find “Why I Hate Drugs.”
“But,” says an outraged reader, “surely this site isn’t saying that drug use is a Leftist cause?” Well, we’ll concede that it’s also the most beloved topic of Libertarians in New York City. But we happened to be at a strip club a few hours after Heath Ledger was found dead. We were talking to a dancer about her politics—reliably Leftist politics, of course—and then she started complaining about how everyone was condemning the freshly dead young actor.
She was going with the assumption that Ledger had died of a drug overdose. “Surfing’s dangerous, too,” she proclaimed, “but it’s a lifestyle choice. There’s no difference between that and drugs.” There’s a band called The Forgotten Rebels who recorded a pretty good song called “Surfin’ On Heroin.” Still, that stripper mainly got us thinking that it was a good thing that Jyoti Mishra wasn’t around to hear that conversation.
Make it your own: A few months ago, it was expensive to buy a copy of
Peek & Poke—or any of White Town’s indie albums. (That
major-label release was always found cheap, though.) Now it seems that Mishra has seized the means of production, and you can once again
easily buy all of his most impressive work.
Peek & Poke has the double moralistic opening of “Why I Hate Drugs” and the fidelity-crazed “Another Lover,” but everything’s worth owning. The most recent one,
Don’t Mention the War, actually avoids mentioning the war. Instead, you get nice tributes to Samantha the Teenage Witch and Emma Goldman.
