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MediaWar.i (+ Michaelangelo Matos)

Loyal, as a word, seems to suggest an at-least semi-blind ideological following, and a local effect, as in "the last loyal guardsmen surrounded the inner chambers of the mosque." It does not suggest, say, a lot of dissimilar people spread across a nation and a region, prosecuting a similar interest through an organizational mechanism.

"Gunmen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr rampaged through Basra and another southern Iraq city," begins this Times article.

There seems also to be some problem with al-Sadr-lovers in Falluja and Najaf, etc.

When we talk about the American soldiers in Najaf and Falluja, in Abu Ghraib and at the National Library, why do we not call them "gunmen loyal to Rumsfeld"?

On a more gracious plane, click the link directly below to read Michaelangelo Matos on George McCrae's "Rock Your Baby," which might also be read along with other delights on his self-titled weblog.

George McCrae, "Rock Your Baby"

Dancing is a communal activity, but most quote-unquote “dance music” involves solitary, non-partnered dancing; if you can feel alone in a crowded room, you can feel even more alone on a crowded dancefloor. The most important thing about George McCrae’s “Rock Your Baby” is how passive it is. The song makes you-slash-the singer feel coddled--musically, it’s a big red wash with gold-sparkle guitar and silver lamé hi-hats--but there‚s nothing brash about the song apart from McCrae‚s muttered “Sexy woman” at the top, before an organ whorls in and carries everything away. But that’s a false start, because with the first line--“Woman, take me in your arms/Rock your baby”--turns what in the title sounds like a command into a plea. He’s surrendering himself to you, wholly and utterly. There’s confidence here, but the urgency undercuts it a little, adding a sense of hesitance to the way McCrae--or maybe just the song--approaches things. Sure, it’s sexy: McCrae coaxes his lover into seducing him. It’s a double seduction. But while nothing about the song is awkward, everything about it is vulnerable, and that, I like to think, resonates with anyone who’s ever wanted to be saved from their own loneliness.

The first time I heard “Rock Your Baby” was probably more like the 50th: last September at a bar-slash-restaurant during a workplace party. About halfway through, I realized that I’d heard it before--and that it had always sounded great, and that I’d always wondered what it was, and that I‚d never found out. (Naturally, I already owned it, on a compilation.) “Rock Your Baby” is famous--the second disco single to hit no. 1--but it was new to me, and ever since then it’s sounded like the missing piece to a puzzle I’ve been forming for years. For a long time, I‚ve been obsessed with what I think of as a specific form of dance music interiority--the way certain records evoke an eyes-closed, living-in-my-head introspection that balances and belies dance music‚s extroverted image: the two Luomo albums, the Superlongevity compilation, Triple R's mix-CD Friends, Richard Davis’s “Bring Me Closer,” and Armand Van Helden and Roland Clark’s “Flowerz.” In particular, “Flowerz” has always sounded to me like an aural iris shot, and as my friend Kristal Hawkins once put it, “Yes, and it’s both wonderful and too much at the same time.”

She had a point: “Flowerz” is ten minutes long. But “Rock Your Baby” is not too much; it hovers, tangible and tactile but still just out of reach. But when the rhythm guitar shadowboxes with the beat during the bridge, turning more liquid-metallic by the bar, the distance lessens. And when McCrae opens up his heart and sends out the most beautiful high note ever sung, the world sounds a lot less lonely.

Posted by jane at May 8, 2004 08:55 AM | TrackBack