Distracted by politics, wounded by their own grief, artists have struggled mightily to help us recover from the biggest tragedy of our age
Jay-Z, rap’s most important voice, created a lasting album that made us all New Yorkers
After the World Trade Center came down, some musicians got angry; others wept openly. There was Toby Keith’s flag-waving rage (“The Angry American”), a literal counterpart to Neil Young’s more studied sadness (“Let’s Roll”).
Much was made of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising,” a 15-track portrait of the day after the terrorist attacks. Like Green Day’s “American Idiot,” we needed “The Rising” — to help us deal and mourn and live in a changed world.
But 10 years later, those records are remnants. They’re not the best works from those artists. They’re not even their most important.
While Jay-Z’s “The Black Album” wouldn’t be the most obvious choice as a standout post- 9/11 record, it gives us everything we need.
There is the local connection, as Jay will be the first to tell you: The streets of New York belong to him. (Remember “The City Is Mine” from ’97?) There is the remorse and anger, with Jay sounding like a changed man — dealing with the new rules as a millionaire, but still dealing. Of course the hip-hop braggadocio is still here, but Jay exercises actual modesty and introspection, including a couple of stories directly from his mom’s mouth on the track “December 4th.”
Pre-“Black Album,” Jay was a superhero who ditched his ghetto childhood for a life of Bentleys and Benzes. But here, we see pieces of Jay the still-vulnerable human being — pieces that might not have shown themselves were he not living in an unpredictable New York in 2003.
From “December 4th”: “Now I’m just scratchin the surface cause what’s buried under there/Was a kid torn apart once his pop disappeared/I went to school, got good grades, could behave when I wanted/But I had demons deep inside that would raise when confronted.”
To boot is the random coincidence: Jay’s “The Blueprint” was released on the actual day, Sept. 11, 2001. And with that record, Jay positioned himself as the biggest rapper on the East Coast. With “The Black Album” — including the President Barack Obama favorite “Dirt Off Your Shoulders,” the angsty Rick Rubin-produced rock-fest “99 Problems” and the soulful “Change Clothes” — Jay became a towering figure in New York hip-hop, American style and worldwide pop culture. And he retained street cred all the while. –Ricardo Baca
Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” captured 9/11 horror before it even happened
From the first moments of the first song on Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” — the definitive record from one of the definitive bands of the past 20 years — a sense of pain and confusion prevails.
Infusing the melancholy tunes: a gurgling antenna drone, a radio dial searching for a signal, a chaotic drum beat and a ringing alarm clock that leads into the lyrics:
“I am an American aquarium drinker
I assassin down the avenue
I’m hiding out in the big city blinking
What was I thinking when I let go of you?”
If America wanted optimism in the wake of 9/11, Wilco denied it. In lieu of patriotism, lead singer Jeff Tweedy venerates the consumer Americana of ATMs, Diet Coke and cigarettes.
Through 11 avante-garde songs that run the gamut of Americana, powerpop and noise rock, Wilco paints a landscape of a troubled America in the early 2000s. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrific, always challenging and inaccessible, it’s a record that requires repeat listens.
Some songs allow their thematic value to float readily to the surface like dead fish (see “War On War” and “Ashes of American Flags”), while others find post-9/11 beauty in simple subtleties.
The unabashed highlight — the orchestral roadhouse waltz of “Jesus, Etc.” — can send chills down your spine with its chorus: “Tall buildings shake/Voices escape singing sad, sad songs.” And while much of the record was put to tape before that morning in September, its release some seven months later felt inexplicably connected to what it meant to be a young American in April 2002.–John Hendrickson
Click below to page 2 to continue reading…
“Rescue Me” helped us exorcise our own demons
Television tiptoed around 9/11 for a long time. In an industry that normally rushes ripped-from-headlines tragedy to the screen within weeks, the magnitude and shock of 9/11 caused a significant delay.
Prime-time dramas nervously incorporated 9/11 first with passing references that felt self-conscious (as long ago as “NYPD Blue”), and then by literally erasing painful memories — editing out visual evidence of the Twin Towers (as in “The Sopranos” opening credits).
Eventually, the small screen provided a tortured and torturing terrorist-fighting hero (Jack Bauer in “24”), ambitious but short-lived cable dramas (“Over There,” “Sleeper Cell”), and science fiction allegory (notably “Fringe,” where, in an alternate reality, the towers never fell).
None of those efforts had the impact of “Rescue Me,” the dark FX series that dealt most frankly with the emotional aftermath of 9/11. It wasn’t until three years after the terror attacks that “Rescue Me” began weighing the fallout on the lives of New York City firefighters. Even then, the cathartic exploration occurred not on broadcast TV but on a small cable channel.
Self-destructive fireman Tommy Gavin (Denis Leary) was the tragic hero — he had a great deal to say about the word “hero” through the years — regularly questioning faith and fate.
Shot on location, “Rescue Me” explored the survivor’s guilt, alcoholism, broken marriages, uncontrolled rage and addiction to danger that haunt the firemen still. Apparitions of dead buddies rising from the ashes and instances of firemen dating the widows of their fallen comrades were persistent themes.
Despite sometimes loopy comic relief, the stories were heartbreaking; in the end, perhaps giving in to the demands of TV as entertainment, co-creators Leary and Peter Tolan offered a hint of hope. –Joanne Ostrow
Violent video games gave Americans a vent for their frustrations after 9/11
It’s no wonder first-person-shooter video games, like the “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” series, exploded in popularity after 9/11.
Instead of promising escapism, they provided an outlet for ordinary Americans (overwhelmingly male, of course) to vent their rage and frustration by aiming virtual weapons at otherwise nebulous foreign enemies.
These hyper-realistic military games have sold tens of millions of copies and raked in billions of dollars, in part by making modern-day terrorism — and, at times, vicious home-soil attacks — part of their plot and rapid-fire action. Many pixel-friendly critics have argued that we’re in a golden age of video games, in terms of both production values and story, and shooter games are among the strongest of the bunch (see the recent or upcoming release of Bodycount, Resistance 3, Battlefield 3, Gears of War 3, Modern Warfare 3 and others).
It only makes sense that they’d be among the first to channel our collective anxiety.
But is it wrong to simulate violent war fantasies from the comfort of a couch while thousands of American soldiers are waging costly anti-terrorism battles in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere? Is it just convenient training for would-be military recruits? Does it, like the violent imagery that permeates popular entertainment in general, just continue to numb and distract us from the legitimate suffering that surrounds us? And does it reinforce knee-jerk reactions over thought and discussion?
Maybe. Video-game environments are entertaining and tidily self-contained — unlike real war, where the blood and trauma lingers long after players switch off the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. But as funhouse mirrors of the past decade, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” and other true-to-life war shooters have reflected a distorted collective therapy that, at times, makes for an eerily lifelike portrait of the aggression and anxiety that violence breeds. –John Wenzel
Editor’s note: This online feature is an excerpt from The Denver Post’s print A&E section from September 11, 2011
Follow our news and updates on , our whereabouts on and our relationship status on . Or send us a telegram.
Ricardo Baca is the founder and executive editor of , the co-founder of The UMS and an award-winning critic and journalist at The Denver Post.
John Hendrickson is the managing editor of Reverb and a multimedia journalist for The Denver Post. Follow his rants on music and more on .
Joanne Ostrow is the Television critic at The Denver Post.
John Wenzel is an executive editor of and an award-winning A&E reporter for The Denver Post. He is the author of (Speck Press/Fulcrum) and maintains a of completely random song titles and band names.
