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  • Come Back to the Dance, Dick Clark, and: Kings of Boogie, and: The Evolution of Rock ’n’ Roll
  • A. E. Stringer (bio)

Come Back to the Dance, Dick Clark

before the ball with your number drops. The latest wannabe hosts of pop aglow in beaming youth will never top your eternal smile, clever ad-libs inciting Times Square throngs. Back on Bandstand you taught us rhythm made the bonehead lyrics matter, and hormones rocked. Proper in ties and dresses, beneath hot studio lights, the couples jockeyed for a pass before the camera, overnight sensation. Amid exaggerations of your death, and our own, you keep the beat, as if counting down the year could save it.

All those facelifts and hairlines redefined, you smooth-talked the new formats into revivals of the music, man. Teeth so bleached they might draw blood, you never changed your tune: if it was pop, you found a way to praise it. Tonight on monster screens [End Page 84] the glittering globe descends the spire again, smile frozen by the stroke of midnight on every upturned face. Living rooms across the planet lit with cheers and kisses, may our dancing children surrender the remotes we need to tune back in.

Kings of Boogie
after Savoy Brown

The stage rises through floodwall shadow. One monster Frisbee-toss down the bank the swelled Ohio muddles into spring. Thin crowd: the barefoot singer jokes the band’s true fans must be in jail, motorcycles parked at bars, forgotten.

It’s never enough he announces: I’m guessing booze, sex, cash, applause. If we dig the riffs, he can buy some shoes. Sun in cool decline, up-loud blues reverbs off downtown bricks and off the river bluffs another second later. It’s almost enough for me. Then

the singer tells the cops to get fucked. Just kidding, officer he elucidates, crowd barely stirring as the crew breaks down makeshift gates. Sudden encore underway, we straggling rockers clap in time, choice last words wailed at the air. [End Page 85]

The elderly edge closer, their little dogs and Sunday walks askance, and fading waves of bass ripple the polyester a little. Like the teens, they don’t know the band, only that the beat went off. Not one to let go of the past too delicately, if ever, I keep shouting requests.

The Evolution of Rock ’n’ Roll

When Elvis left the federal building he was humming in Seconal haze, casting glittered shadows on the flag. Now the Graceland bathroom is full of booming babies, the company offices automated, the concert stages on fire. The King’s megawatt tower—wxyr toppled for a dealership, fat Hummers line the lot, gleaming for all creation like Brinks trucks, a choice of six colors. Each one sold can blast a load of classics, three hundred watts and two subwoofers, so far off-road that nothing echoes in the suburbs but MasterCard jingles, elevator filler, and a suicide rag. [End Page 86]

A. E. Stringer

A. E. Stringer’s new collection of poems, Human Costume, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry of Ireland. His work has appeared in Antaeus, the Nation, Shenandoah, Cincinnati Review, and others.

“Baby Boomer. It sounds like a minor thunderclap. Is the storm over, or just beginning?”

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