Okay, one of my regular podcasts is We Will Rank You (youtube link) in which several friends from southern California rank the songs on albums from bottom to top. Some episodes they go through the whole album, sometimes they discuss their top 5 songs. One of the reasons I enjoy it is that the hosts are only a few years younger than I am and often my tastes and theirs align.

In the most recent episode (The Pixies’ Doolittle), one of the guys asked: Are there any unrankable albums – albums in which there are no duff songs. Great question. Before they moved on, Radiohead’s OK Computer was offered. Yeah, possibly. In my Radiohead canon, The Bends and In Rainbows are better, but that’s a discussion for another day. What’s the first album that comes to mind for you, dear reader? My brain goes to David Bowie first, as always. Are there albums of his that are so perfect that no song ranks lower than any other? The run from StationToStation (1976) through Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) (1980) fulfills this for me, but what about 1975’s Young Americans (7 days out of 10, my favourite DB album)?

Clocking in at 8 tracks and 41 minutes, it is almost unrankable. The title track comes in first. From Andy Newmark’s drum riff and Mike Garson’s piano trill, it’s a perfect song. From Win (track 2) through to Fame (track 8, a John Lennon cowrite and Bowie’s first #1 US hit) there are no missteps. Except for a very strange cover of the Beatles’ Across the Universe. It’s possible that even in the Beatles’ canon that song is a misstep. Fight me.

The folks on We Will Rank You talk about ‘the line’ by which they mean, how many of these songs are absolutely necessary. Obviously for me with this album, the line is 7. When Bowie came to make his next album, 1976’s Station To Station, he only included six songs. And for that album , my line is also 6. (Weirdly, the title track, which clocks in at just over 10 minutes, is actually three songs stitched together, but the whole thing works perfectly as one track.)

The Hebrew word for truth, אמת (emet), is interesting because each letter stands on a solid base – the two feet of the aleph and the tof, and the line of the mem in the middle of the word. In the context of the alef-bet, it forms a tripod, as well, as the alef and the tof are the first and last letters, and the mem sits in the middle. I had a Hebrew teacher when I was about 13 who explained this to me and contrasted it with the word for falsehood, שקר (sheker). Each letter of this word stands on one foot and the letters themselves are grouped at the end of the alef-bet.
With this this mind, I have a large tattoo of the word אמת on my left arm. Six or seven years ago, a Palestinian colleague confronted me saying ‘Your truth is a lie’. I had a few interactions with Nabil and tried to defend my own position with regards to the current Israeli administration. I did a poor job of it. (I’m a lousy marketeer – for all my love of music, I rarely manage to convince people to listen to music I like.) I’ve never managed to defend the position that Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people should have a right to exist. This, please note, is the sole tenet of Zionism – everything else is antisemitic bullshit. I will say that much of what Israel has done for decades is indefensible. (I’m not saying that Hamas’ behavior towards Israel is defensible either. It isn’t. There’s no equivalence)
But back to tattoos. I didn’t have a real connection to the person who did the Hebrew tattoo on me, but I chose the artist who did three or four others on my skin based on his well-documented talent. Freddy Corbin already had a very good reputation 30-plus years ago and earned the nickname Freddy Jesus for his skill with Catholic imagery. What sold me on Corbin’s work was a cover job in his portfolio. A man came to him with a large black SS logo on his arm. He designed and inked a sacred heart over the logo leaving almost none of the nazi image visible.
I’ve found myself thinking in the last few days of how I could have the Hebrew word on my arm covered. From the original philosophical standpoint, the tattoo is defensible. Even from an armchair Zionist perspective, I can still try. And I will not stop defending Israel’s right to exist. But, I continue to ask myself, does this defense – and does this tattoo – signify an implicit defense of the current governing structure?

Again, I’m not comparing my Hebrew text to a nazi logo – there is no comparison. In 1990, or so, the person with that nazi logo determined, or was made to see that the philosophy and hatred behind its symbolism were no longer meaningful to him and he did something to change that. For me, the aspiration towards truth, the aspiration that my words are solid like the tripod of the word, in form and in function, remains, no matter that I fail at it more than I succeed. The aspiration remains.
However, the symbolism of text in Hebrew characters remains a question for me. I’ll point to the band Godspeed You! Black Emperor, some of whose members are Jewish. Their music is mostly instrumental, and they let titles (both album and song) carry a lot of weight. In 2021 they released an album called G_d’s Pee At States’ End, on the CD of which was printed the Yiddish text מיר װעלן זײ איבערלעבן, We will outlive them, meaning antisemites in specific and haters in general. Last year they released a new album for which they were hard pressed to come up with a title. Its name? No Title As of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead.
The number reflects the purported number of Palestinian dead in Israeli strikes on Gaza between 7 October 2023 and the date in the title – which itself was six months before the album’s release and nearly a year before the cease-fire in that conflict. The only spoken text on the the album is a poem read in Spanish on the song Raindrops Cast In Lead. (Gracious, can you imagine the guts behind that song title?)
As with the band, I too can contain multitudes – insisting on my continued existence as a Jew and being ambivalent about the nature of my truth, and outraged at what is done in its name.