Jonathan Lethem - The Fortress of Solitude

I promised a story, and stories have endings. Andre Deehorn produced a variety of acts in Philadelphia and later in Los Angeles, scoring on the dance charts with Sophistifunction and Fool’s Gold, among others. He now works as a personal manager in Los Angeles. Rudy Bicycle and Alfred Maddox remain lifelong friends, each living with their families in Dearborn, Michigan, and working in the industry which has supported them all their lives, Bicycle booking musical acts at casinos in nearby Windsor, Ontario, and Maddox as a publicist for the Motown museum. Denny Longham never lost his interest in hair; after the Distinctions disbanded in 1977 he opened King’s Hair Throne, a clip shop in South Philly, and was a neighborhood fixture until his death from pneumonia in 1985. He was 44. In 1977 James Macy followed Andre Deehorn to Los Angeles, and struggled for years to find a hit on a variety of distaff labels. He and two companions were killed by shotgun blasts by unknown assailants while sitting in a car at a traffic light in Culver City on September 25, 1988. He was 47. Marv Brown never again found a musical partnership as satisfying as that which began at the Hi Studio in 1967. He worked with the house band at Sigma for a year, then vanished, and later took his own life by hanging in a Patterson, New Jersey, flophouse in 1994. He was 56.

After winning custody of his son, Barrett Rude Jr. moved to Brooklyn, and there sank gradually into a cocaine-fueled desolation. Rude’s father joined the household after his release from prison in 1977; his relationship with Rude was uneasy at best. The atmosphere was volatile, a bad blend of Rude’s hedonism and his father’s quirky brand of Pentecostalism, with its moral fervor, its love-hate fascination with music and sensuality, its arcane Sabbathdays. (It’s odd to consider that Marvin Gaye, Philippe Wynne, and Barrett Rude Jr. were all, by choice or upbringing, weird black jews .) On August 16, 1981, during a family dispute, Barrett Rude Senior aimed a pistol at his son and grandson. Whether he intended to use it can’t be known. Another gun appeared, and grandson shot grandfather to death. Rude’s son, who’d turned eighteen two months earlier, was convicted as an adult, of involuntary manslaughter. Though Rude was uninjured, the gunshot ended what remained of his public life. His silence since that time is complete. For what it’s worth, the man is still alive.

That’s the story. But what matters is a story in song. The music in this collection tells a tale-of beauty, inspiration, and pain-in voices out of the ghetto and the suburb, the church and the schoolyard, voices of celebration and mourning, sometimes voices of pensiveness and heartache so profound they feel unsustainable in the medium of pop. The voices may propel you to warble along, or to dance, they may inspire you to seduction or insurrection or introspection or merely to watching a little less television. The voices of Barrett Rude Jr. and the Subtle Distinctions lead nowhere, though, if not back to your own neighborhood. To the street where you live. To things you left behind.

And that’s what you need, what you needed all along. Like the song says: sometimes we all must get bothered blue.

Disc 1: 1-2: The Four Distinctions, singles on Tallhat1961, “Hello,” “Baby on the Moon.” 3-4: The Four Distinctions, canceled Tamla single, 1965, “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” b/w “Rolling Downhill.” 5-8: BRJ singles on Hi, 1967: “Set a Place at Your Table” (R &B #49), “Love in Time,” “Rule of Three,” “I Saw the Light,” 9-10 Unreleased demos, 1968: “Step Up and Love Me,” “So-Called Friends.” 11-14: From Have You Heard the Distinctions? , Philly Groove, 1969: “Step Up and Love Me” (R &B #1, pop #8), “Eye of the Beholder,” “Heart and Five Fingers,” “Lonely and Alone.” 15-19: From The Deceptively Simple Sounds of the Subtle Distinctions , Atco, 1970: “(No Way to Help You) Ease Your Mind” (R &B #1, pop #2), “Far More the Man,” “Raining on a Sunny Day” (R &B #7, pop #88), “Happy Talk” (R &B #20, pop #34), “Just in Case (You Turn Around).” Disc 2: 1-4: From The Distinctions in Your Neighborhood , Atco, 1971: “Sucker Punches” (R &B #18, pop, did not chart), “Silly Girl (Love Is for Kids)” (R &B #11, pop #16), “Jane on Tuesday,” “Bricks in the Yard.” 5-9: From Nobody and His Brother , Atco 1972: “Bothered Blue” (R &B #1, pop #1), “Finding It Out,” “So Stupid Minded,” “If You Held the Key,” “The Lisa Story,” 10: From The Subtle Distinctions Love You More! , Atco, 1973: “Painting of a Fool” (R &B #18). 11-13: from On His Own (BRJ solo), Atco, 1972: “As I Quietly Walk” (R &B #12, pop # 48), “It Matters More,” “This Eagle’s Flown.” 14-16: From Take It, Baby (BRJ solo), Atco, 1973: “Careless” (R &B #24), “Lover of Women,” “A Boy Is Crying.” 17-18: BRJ solo single, Fantasy 1975: “Who’s Callin’ Me?” (R &B #63) b/w “ Crib Jam.” 19: Casablanca, 1978: BRJ guest appearanceon Doofus Funkstrong’s “(Did You Press Your) Bump Suit” (R &B #84, pop #100). 20-21: Unreleased BRJ demos: “Smile Around Your Cigarette,” “It’s Raining Teeth.”

In the attic room I called my office sat a daybed that was usually spread with paper, the press packets which accompanied promotional copies of CDs and the torn bubble wrap and padded mailers the CDs arrived in. This morning, though, the bedspread, bathed in sideways seven A.M. September light, Indian summer light, was clear of packaging husks, clear of publicity. Instead the daybed held two things: a CD wallet, with plastic sleeves to hold twenty-four discs, and Abigale Ponders, in threadbare Meat Puppets T-shirt (mine) and Calvin Klein men’s underwear (not mine, she bought her own), her limbs bent in sleepily elegant disarray. Only one of the two would be joining me on the nine-thirty flight to Los Angeles. Discman and headphones were already packed, along with a single change of clothes, in a small overnight satchel waiting at the door downstairs.

It wasn’t usual to see Abby in my attic office. In truth, I was peevish to have her there. I’d been hoping to slip from the house while she was still asleep in the room below. Instead she’d trotted upstairs after me. There, in slanted light, her white shorts glowing against her skin and the maroon bedspread, she made a picture-one suitable, if you discounted the Meat Puppets emblem on the thin-stretched white shirt, for the jacket art on an old Blue Note jazz LP. She resembled a brown puppet herself, akimbo, head propped angled, mouth parted, lids druggy. I would have had to be a scowling Miles Davis to feel worthy of stepping into the frame. Or, at least, Chet Baker. Abby’s whole being was a reproach to me. I loved having a black girlfriend, and I loved Abby, but I was no trumpet player.

Shopping at my wall of CDs, I opened a jewel case and dropped Ron Sexsmith’s Whereabouts onto the spread beside the wallet.

She yawned. “Why are you staying overnight, anyway?” Abby counted on groggy insouciance to break the stalemate of the night before. We’d been in a silent war, worse than ever. This was worth a try-I rooted for her, even if I couldn’t cooperate.