Millennial Chilblain

One begins to see bikes in all sorts of contexts. Labann gathers and sorts, intentionally overlooks and underrates some brackets. But culture tends to be ubiquitous. Bicycling signifies as a means of motility for a billion humans, thrice as many as motoring, nearly as universal as walking. What and who you associate can be less than objective and more sentimental. It’s not a diamond frame or spoked wheel that fascinates, though hypnotic repetition does fixate, rather what you do, where you go, and who you meet, sources of untold delight and inspiration, because you’ve emerged from a frightened cocoon into a wide world by rolling farther and faster.

Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, who curated an art show on bicycling culture (at The Aldrich, Ridgefield, CT) about same time as Labann, wrote a book on his experience pedaling his Montague folding bike through various localities. Curiously, he only mentions bike in one song you can point to, listed among 2000 others, but you’ve got to think it informs a lot of his repertoire. Consider, for example, his Slippery People, “What about the time? You were rollin' over. Fall on your face. You must be having fun... Think of a time. You’d best believe this thing is real... These slippery people help us understand... Don’t play no games, he's alright, love from the bottom to the top... We’re gonna move right now, turn like a wheel inside a wheel.” But Byrne goes on to say that, “There are some things you just can’t write songs about,” including a concept album on city planning that could serve cyclists, though songs aplenty exist to fill scores of them. Labann was there with B&C on CD and rainbow poster to hand Byrne after he spoke about Bicycle Diaries, but the squirrelly rock star slipped away from book signing, so his loss. David has gone white haired. Labann, 2 months older, has not. Cleaner living?

All this occurred in 2009, renowned as the Year of the Bicycle, as did the publication of Robert Hurst's Cyclist’s Manifesto: The Case For Riding On Two Wheels Instead Of Four, Falcon Guide, 2009, 224 pp. “The United States is not going to morph into a nation of bicyclists as it does in the darkest apocalyptic vision. The first thing we need is for people to be realistic... Americans cling with renewed urgency to the ideal of the personal automobile... It’s a colossal and perhaps fatal failure of imagination.” That mankind got lazy, grew tired of struggling, and slapped motors on everything couldn’t be more obvious as the beginning of the end. Before Civil War Bitter Bierce berated Inventors as people who arrange levers, springs and wheels and believe it civilization. Hurst’s slim Manifesto recalls several such prescient insights. Might dismiss it as historic revisionism if it didn’t expose white snobbery of wheelmen nerds, because it persists into present as an epic disappointment.

Late Audioslave/Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell's, When Bad Does Good, ostensibly has nothing to do with cycling, same as his I Am The Highway, but watch official video, and its autobiographical lyrics are portrayed throughout by a bicycling paperboy. Cornell cut a tragic silhouette of mental depression and opioid addiction, but still haunts imagination of filmmakers, such as Brad Pitt, who just announced a biopic on the fallen star. Perhaps his calls for help went unanswered, like so many others, which exposes the failure of psychology and wealth of behavioral knowledge that lets booze, drugs, guns and injustices coexist and explode in mass murder. Unlike 27 Club, including neighbor Kurt Cobain, he made it into his early 50's, but short lives succinctly dissected seem esteemed more than complex extended deeds completed.

Likewise, with no thematic connection though previously listed, video for Corinne Bailey Rae’s Put Your Records On, features a bevy of beauties on girly bikes, with baskets for trips to the market and no top bar, though you now also often see women using so called boy’s bikes. In same vein, Kenny Loggins pop tune I’m Alright opens comedy Caddyshack with head caddy resolutely riding his bike to work. These and more have suggestive lyrics but just don’t plainly spell b-i-k-e. Then others stoked on testosterone spell BIKE right out, such as The Foes of Fern’s, but suggest something else altogether. Nothing new, Sammy Kaye and his swing orchestra recorded something similar in 1950. Kristen Black, The Bicycle Song, Can’t Bring Me Down, 2016, just must have some. Perhaps she can hook up with fellow CD Baby artist Nicholas James Thomasma, who has his own Bicycle Song, Barefoot, 2016, full of hormonal heat.

Better to praise the best, but how do you define it? Used to form a posse on Sundays for recreational rides. For a while, we’d all go together in a van while listening to CDs of Labann’s collected bike songs. Sure, carpooling cut carbon footprint, but riding a bike to the ride reduced it further, though took a toll on group performance. Commuting by bike reigns supreme as carbon neutral, sequesters carbon in graphite components and steel frames, and skips motoring entirely. Driver once asked for a Best Bike Mix, since so many shared seemed shrugged off rubbish. It’s been tried, internet sites claim victory, but Labann knows scores of sweet tunes that few do since seldom said. You get Logan Paul’s misogynistic, reckless ripoff of Flobots’ No Handlebars instead. Did he get hired? Based on comparable background, a president was elected.

Tried to honor that request without insulting artists who at least made an attempt or did their best. You endear audiences when you reach them personally. Labann strongly connected with certain tunes from almost unknowns, like Jack Wardell’s aptly named Bike and Chain, Matthew Price’s all too true Freedom Machine, Melody Gardot’s alarming reminder Some Lessons, and Tracy Jane Comer’s coming of age Yellow Bike. Bits of bicycling media don’t bring big rewards, rather derision from lowbrows, stereotyping as just another crank, or worse. It’s sales suicide, so often shunned. Honest assessments get turned into click bait by millennial hackers, who can’t be bothered doing own research and don’t know why it matters, to extract pennies from greedy advertisers. Pathetic. Hoar frosts any commitments for earnest scholarship published open source, yet not so heavily one might get a chilblain for which calamine lotion, Pond's Extract, witch hazel, and wool socks would soothe pain.