I love a good sandwich.
Liz Lemon, the perennially put-upon heroine of 30 Rock, once said, "I believe that all anyone really wants in this life is to sit in peace and eat a sandwich." And I couldn't agree more. The sandwich is such a simple thing, and yet, the right combination of ingredients, served in the right atmosphere, makes it more than a meal. It's nirvana.
My favorite is the club sandwich. Juicy grilled chicken, crispy thick-cut bacon, aged Swiss cheese, fresh lettuce and red onion (no tomatoes... they're the Devil's fruit), all nestled between golden toasted slices of sourdough bread with a slight smear of mayonnaise. Partner that with a mountainous jumble of hot, salty skinny fries and a frosty glass of iced tea or beer, and you've got a meal fit for a king. Or, at the very least, for a nerdy cat-loving internet columnist. (Fun fact: "club" stands for "Chicken and Lettuce Under Bacon". I just learned that last year!)
One thing that most people don't realize is that the setting in which the sandwich is served is almost as important as the quality of the ingredients. I've made myself numerous clubs here at home, but it's not the same as chowing down in a neighborhood restaurant, sucking down a pint or twelve of hazy IPA while Bon Jovi blares on the newfangled electronic jukebox. Before the pandemic ruined everything, I would go downtown to this great decades-old bar and grill every Thursday for a work lunch. While I was fixing plot holes and dialog in one of my scripts, I'd savor my precious sandwich/fries/beer combo as the SoCal "Cheers" locals caroused at the bar. In some weird, mystical way, the locale can make the meal even more delicious.
The sandwich is pervasive in our culture. When it's used as a reference, or in a simile or metaphor, people instantly get the concept. For example, if I were to tell you, "I want to be the meat in a Hayley Atwell/Christina Ricci sandwich", you'd never let me babysit your kids again, but you'd get where I was coming from. There's a management technique called the "complement sandwich", in which a boss will start with praise, follow with some criticism, and then end with another positive comment. The bad stuff is "sandwiched" between the good stuff. Everyone understands how a sandwich works. It's universal.
2021 was kind of the Bizarro-world "anti-complement sandwich". The "bread" consisted of two horrible events: a bunch of violent insurrectionists nearly destroying our democracy just to appease their wannabe emperor in January, and the death of Betty White on the last day of December. And before you start bitching at me: yes, I know that the death of a nonagenarian actress doesn't begin to compare with America as we know it burning to the ground. But they were both gut-punches to a large number of people. And they impacted the national discourse in a big way.
The filling of the 2021 crap sandwich, however, actually wasn't too bad. In fact, there was a lot of good stuff that happened between January and December. Me personally, I had a pretty decent run last year. Even though the pandemic mostly prevented me from doing my favorite things, I buckled down at home and made the best of it. For one thing, I got to continue slapping together this sort-of-regular column. It's a bit of fluff, but it's fun, and it exercises my creative muscles. More importantly, after years of writing and submitting, I finally won a couple of screenwriting contests. I also spent the year adapting a true crime book into a screenplay that, to my astonishment, made the author of the source material cry, he loved it so much. (Stanley Kubrick also made Stephen King cry, but in a very different way.) And, most importantly, I actually got paid as a writer! It wasn't a ton, but it was a legitimate paycheck, and it was the boost I needed to stay in the game.
And of course, there was music. Glorious music. Over the twelve months of 2021, a diverse crop of artists caught my attention with an impressive cornucopia of tunes. Here, in no real order, are several standouts that I played to death while I was cooped up in the house.
PRINCE - "Check The Record" (from Welcome 2 America)
The Prince is dead, long live the Prince! After a rocky start, the Prince Estate got their bearings and began putting out quality reissues from his legendary Vault, the pinnacle so far being the stellar Super Deluxe Edition ("SDE") of Sign 'O' The Times. But it's not just all the old stuff they've reclaimed as they dug through his mountain of tapes. Prince was notorious for recording songs, or making videos, or filming movies, and at the last minute pulling them from release and squirreling them away in the Vault. That's what happened with Welcome 2 America. He recorded a full album. He prepped it for release. And then... he killed it. Why? Who knows! And just because Prince works in mysterious ways, he then went on a huge tour named after the album that he refused to release. That's Prince for you. As it stands, Welcome 2 America is pretty good by later-era Prince standards. This song was my favorite, a crunchy, powerful slice of guitar funk, the kind that he could do in his sleep. What other treats await us inside the depths of The Vault? I can't wait to find out!
KATE BUSH - "The Big Sky" (from The Hounds Of Love)
One of the great things about shuffling playlists is that you never know what's going to bubble to the surface. You might wind up hearing an old favorite that dropped off your radar over the years. That's the case with "The Big Sky", a propulsive rock/pop tune from British songstress Kate Bush. I discovered her back in college thanks to my friend Erik and his endless series of mix tapes. Although she's not really known here in the States, she took her native England by storm with her very first album. (Released when she was a teenager!) Over the years, she honed her quirky, artsy rock and pop stylings, creating an incredibly eclectic body of work in the process. Hounds Of Love is probably her most well-know album, and this track has always been my favorite. Energetic and catchy, it's one of those well-crafted songs that builds and builds, adding layers of instrumentation and vocals until it becomes a sonic celebration. To be honest, this video isn't what I see in my head when I'm listening to the song. But I don't see the world the way Kate does. And I'm poorer for it.
MATTHEW SWEET - "Give A Little" (from Catspaw)
I've raved about Matthew Sweet already, but I'll say it again: he's the greatest! Matthew is one pillar of my "musical trinity", sharing the pantheon with Queen and Prince. Once a flag-bearer for the nascent early 90s power pop boom, three decades later he's settled into his role as an elder statesman of self-produced indie rock. "Give A Little" is another sterling example of his laid back, slightly-country-slightly-alternative-tinged indie rock style, anchored by his trademark multi-tracked vocal harmonies. And for this album, he embraced the challenge of recording all the lead guitar parts himself. If the pandemic ever ends, I swear I will be front and center when he goes back on the road. Thank you, Matthew, for continuing to be awesome.
JEFF AUSTIN BLACK - "Dream" (from Criminal)
Okay, this is going to take some explaining. Waaay back in 2000, a tech company called Applied Materials released a commercial featuring a bunch of Latin American kids enjoying all the modern devices that were made possible by Applied Materials' products. But the ad itself wasn't the draw... it was the song that played during all the on-screen antics. At first, all us Oasis fans thought it was some unknown, unreleased track. But people who are more dedicated than I am actually contacted Applied Materials for more info. It turns out, the song was by a band named Hairy Monster who recorded this one tune and then promptly broke up. At that point the trail went cold. The song never turned up anywhere. No one could find out any info about Hairy Monster. That, as they say, was that.
But I never forgot that earworm of a tune. At random moments it would pop into my head, and then after obsessively watching that ad a few times, I'd spend a good hour doing my best Googling to find some trace of the song, or the band, or anything. So imagine my surprise when I stumbled across this recording on YouTube. I couldn't believe it! This is a different arrangement, with more of a country pop vibe than the original Brit pop version… but it's the song! I've tried contacting Black to find out how he got hold of the tune, but he's apparently dropped off the face of the earth too. Such a mystery! But at least now I have a version, if not the version, of a song that's haunted my thoughts for two decades.
QUIVERS - "Gutters Of Love" (from Golden Doubt)
I subscribe to a lot of music email newsletters. A lot. So many, in fact, that I got numb to them. It came to a point where I wouldn't read them, I'd just reflexively delete them in a vain attempt to keep my inbox unclogged. When the pandemic kicked in, however, I found myself hungry for new entertainment, which prompted me to enthusiastically peruse each newsletter for new music and bands. That's how I discovered Quivers, an Australian quartet who've been around since 2015. Sometimes you want your music full of bombast and theatrics, and then sometimes you just want the simple basics of a well-crafted pop song. That's "Gutters Of Love". The melancholy tone, the steady tempo, the shimmering guitar work, the haunting backing vocals... every perfectly-crafted element made it my favorite song of 2021. The homemade video only adds to the intimacy of the song. "Gutters Of Love" is happy, wistful, hopeful, and forlorn, all at once. I hope these guys continue to make wonderful music like this for a long, long time. The world needs more of their special brand of guitar pop.
There were lots of honorable mentions in 2022. As per usual, Guided By Voices put out another two albums, the song "High In The Rain" being my favorite out of both sets. My current favorite pop group, The Go! Team, delighted my ears with "Let The Seasons Work", another of the ebullient high school band-style workouts at which they excel. "Asking For A Friend" from Scottish synth pop trio CHVRCHES found them returning to prime pop form after changing producers for their previous album. And another newsletter find was Cold Cave, whose gothy darkwave track "Prayer From Nowhere" sounds like an outtake from Depeche Mode's Black Celebration period. 2021 might have been a tainted sandwich, but there were isolated bites here and there that went down smooth.
So what's in store for 2022? Based on what I've gleaned from my online travels, quite a bit. Tears For Fears will release The Tipping Point, their first collection of new music in fourteen years (!), this February. It's a given that Robert Pollard and crew will grace us with another couple of Guided By Voices albums. There's a chance Canadian indie popsters Alvvays might have a new album waiting in the wings. And who knows what fantastic discovery awaits me in the upcoming music newsletters? The anticipation is delicious!
When it comes to reissues and SDEs, 2022 has the potential to be jam-packed (and financially painful). Apparently the manufacturing supply issues created by the pandemic hit vinyl record plants hard. So a multitude of box sets and SDEs that were either CD/LP combos, or CD and LP versions released simultaneously, were delayed from 2021 to 2022. That means, at some point during the coming year, I'm hopefully going to be the proud owner of big-ass deluxe editions of Rage In Eden by Ultravox, MACHINA by Smashing Pumpkins, and Diamonds And Pearls by Prince. (Although I'd rather have Around The World In A Day or Lovesexy, but I'll take what I can.) Producer extraordinaire Steven Wilson announced he was working his remastering magic on XTC's Apple Venus, but there was an unconfirmed report that the album's digital files are too damaged to repair, which makes me really sad. Rumors have abounded for the last couple of years of comprehensive box sets for The B-52's and Blondie, but at this point I'm not holding my breath. And hopefully there will be some surprise announcements to liven things up. 2022 holds the promise of being a big year for fans and collectors alike.
All this talk of sandwiches has made me hungry. And yet, in a twist worthy of the great O. Henry, I will probably never enjoy the comfort of a club sandwich - hell, any sandwich! - ever again. After years of not treating my body like the temple it is, I've come to a point where I have to cut pretty much everything delicious out of my life. No more bread, so there go the sandwiches. No more sugar, so time to pour out my treasured sodey. No more salt, so bye-bye popcorn and chips. No more alcohol, so that's the end of blacking out in the Chuck E. Cheese parking lot. My 2022 is going to be full of music, but at the same time it's going to be devoid of gastronomic pleasure.
I had a good run, though. Five and half decades of being a slovenly garbage compactor isn't bad. (And I still have a decent head of hair.) You should have seen me in college. I was a bottomless pit! I'd polish off 96 ounces of soda a day, along with chicken sandwiches and Twinkies and burgers and chips and candy bars and God knows what else. I was a 135 pound furnace, burning calories like a Pennsylvania coal fire. I wasn't much better in my twenties and thirties. And once I moved to California and discovered all-you-can-eat Indian buffets... HEEE-YIKES! Game over, man.
Some people might say I should just continue being out of control. That taking advantage of all the world's pleasures is the reason for existing. That life is best lived by pushing one's limits.
Eh... I don't know about all that. I'm not exactly ready to cash out just yet. I think I'd rather cut back on the Pringles and zinfandel, and enjoy a few more years here on earth. I've got a long list of stuff I want to do and experience. I want to see my name on the big screen. To record a song. To publish a book. To see Suzie with her top off. (She says she's almost fairly confident it'll happen some time in the next couple of years. That right there is something to live for!)
But none of that will come about if my liver dies, or my pancreas explodes, or my heart stops. I had my fun. Time to be responsible. Nothing but healthy stuff for me from now on. No more delicious hazy IPA. No more salty fries. No more juicy chicken... and crispy bacon and... and...
Damn. I'd love a good sandwich.
BIO
Don Stroud is not the famous actor and world-class surfer of the same name. He is the non-famous California transplant who became an award-winning film editor and - finally - an award-winning screenwriter. He loves cats, sushi, comic books, movies, music, and Cherry Coke. What's that, dear? Oh yes: and his long-suffering wife. You can follow him on Twitter, where he pops up sporadically, at @DonStroud2.