Playing for the Devil

Dwayne Carter is headed to prison and, I have to say, I won’t miss him. “Lil’ Wayne,” as he’s known – or “Weezy” to his friends – is a rap artist whose album, “Tha Carter III,” was the top selling album in 2008. Carter pleaded guilty to felony gun charges for possession of an unlicensed handgun in New York City and was sentenced to a year in prison at Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday. He’s also wanted for felony drug possession and weapons charges in Arizona, so he may have more legal troubles ahead of him.

I have a wonderful relationship with my two daughters – I’m incredibly fortunate – but the biggest arguments I’ve had with them, hands down, have been about rap music. I think it’s toxic, and they think… well, it’s probably better for me not to characterize their points of view. Suffice it to say, they like to go to parties and dance, and rap music has been a big part of the dance scene for a decade or more. I understand that. But – and here’s where the arguments start – I think that rap music, apart from its dance beat, conveys messages that are misogynistic and anti-social. The lyrics, as far as I can tell, celebrate gun violence, drug use, criminal behavior and sexual exploitation of women. And based on what I’ve seen and read, it appears that the financial and social success that rap artists have enjoyed as a result of their popularity has made them role models for a generation of young African American men, many of whom have turned their backs on education and responsible relationships with women for the “hip hop life.” But then I’m a middle-aged white guy from the suburbs, so my credibility on this subject is probably somewhere close to zero.

As I’ve reflected on my arguments with my daughters about rap music, I’ve come to believe that my disapproval, and parental disapproval in general, is probably an important part of rap’s appeal. Rap wouldn’t be very exciting for my kids if mom and dad played it at home. And not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s plainly hypocritical for those of us in the Woodstock generation to complain about the music our kids enjoy. (I don’t think my own parents were too thrilled to turn on the radio and hear “Let’s Spend the Night Together” or “One Toke Over the Line”). Music provided a soundtrack for rebellion in my generation, and there’s no reason to suspect that things have changed much for kids today.

When you’re young, there’s something irresistible about things that are dangerous. I picked up on this when I was a little boy growing up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, listening to early Rock ‘n Roll playing on the loudspeaker at the local swimming pool. Pat Boone was boring. Jerry Lee Lewis was dangerous.

I recently found a clip of Jerry Lee on You Tube and played it for my younger daughter, who is a senior in high school. The video featured “The Killer” performing on a British television show in the early to mid-sixties, several years past his heyday and looking fairly ridiculous as he pounded out “High Heeled Sneakers” in the midst of the proper-looking British kids who were dancing around his piano. My daughter thought the performance was somewhere between gross and laughable, but I thought it was terrific.

Jerry Lee has led a colorful, and not always happy life. He’s almost 75 now, and he’s been married six times, once, notoriously, to his 13 year-old first cousin, once removed. One of his wives drowned in a swimming pool and one died of a drug overdose, and one of his six children drowned when he was only three years old, and another son, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jr., was killed in a car accident at age 14.

Lewis envied the greater success and popularity of Elvis Presley, and was once arrested when he showed up drunk and disorderly at 3 a.m. at the gates of Graceland, waving a loaded gun and demanding to see The King. Later that same year, The Killer made news again when he was playing around with a loaded gun and accidentally shot his bass player in the chest. So when Jerry Lee sings “I’m gonna take my pistol Baby, cause some cat might wanna fight” in High Heeled Sneakers, he has some credibility.

Jerry Lee Lewis had grown up as a poor but God-fearing southern boy in eastern Louisiana. In a story I found on the Internet, a friend of Lewis’s, Peary Green, remembered him getting expelled from school after he played some “worldly” music at a church assembly. Years later, Green asked Lewis, “Are you still playing the devil’s music?” And Lewis said, “Yes, I am. But you know it’s strange, the same music that they kicked me out of school for is the same kind of music they play in their churches today. The difference is, I know I’m playing for the devil and they don’t.”

Casablanca Quiz Answers:

In a previous post I included a trivia quiz for fans of the movie Casablanca. Answers below:

1. Rick’s last name
Answer: Blaine
2. The bartender’s name at Rick’s Café Americain
Answer: Sascha
3. Maiden name of Ilsa
Answer: Lund
4. Ilsa’s home town
Answer: Oslo
5. Amount Louis bets Rick that Victor Laszlo will not leave Casablanca
Answer: 10,000 francs (Rick proposes 20,000, but Louis insists they bring it down to 10,000 because “I’m just a poor corrupt official.”)
6. Color dress Ilsa was wearing when the German’s marched into Paris
Answer: blue (“The Germans wore grey, you wore blue,” Rick remembers).
7. Name of Signor Ferrari’s bar
Answer: the Blue Parrot
8. Name of Rick’s bar in Paris
Answer: Le Belle Aurore
9. City where Victor Laszlo was arrested by the Germans and put in a concentration camp
Answer: Prague
10. The kind of water Louis drinks
Answer: Vichy
11. The winning roulette number for the lucky Bulgarian refugee
Answer: 22
12. Name of the town Louis suggests he and Rick retire to at the end of the film
Answer: Brazzaville (currently the capital of the Republic of the Congo, but then the capital of French Equatorial Africa)