I Will Take the Answer by Ander Monson

Author:Ander Monson [Monson, Ander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-64445-110-6
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2019-03-08T16:00:00+00:00

Will the Sun Rise

I’m back and I’m reading a long poem by a friend and teacher, Sheryl St. Germain, from her book The Small Door of Your Death, written in part about her son, Gray, who died at age thirty. In it the two of them connect and reconnect over music: REM, Uncle Tupelo, New Order. Gray was a talented musician, part of the band Ghosthustler (you can find some of their stuff on Youtube), and while I met him only once or twice, his loss is still palpable. That’s the echo good art makes (both his and hers), and even if I can’t really register what it would be like to lose a child, the poems give me a little bit—as much as I can take—of the experience. I think that’s partly why we connect so strongly over music, one reason why my wife and I run the yearly March Xness tournament of essays about songs: because thinking about music (however good or bad) is an opportunity for connection. So maybe even Dokken, too, can be an opportunity for connection.

Reading this poem and thinking about Sheryl and her son listening to New Order together I feel something opening.

In response to this opportunity I’m feeling for art, I cue up a couple of Dokken tracks. (I downloaded their entire discography so as to more exhaustively research this essay.) Listening to Dokken now, they don’t seem any better or any worse than anything I listened to thirty years ago. They were fine. Better than fine actually. Some of their songs rock somewhat, and occasionally a lot. More than you’d expect. The videos don’t help their cause, however: some bands chose their video directors wisely or found their own good ideas; for the most part Dokken was not one of these. Narrative helps, I want to tell them through elapsed time. Don’t be too literal. Find hotter actresses if you’re going to center the videos around them (see also “Breaking the Chains”: look at the screenshot from the video on Youtube: it is just awesome/awful).

Dokken is named for the lead singer, Don Dokken, who reportedly years after the band peaked, required the smaller clubs that booked him to introduce him as “The Legendary Don Dokken” (a move Andrew Eldritch would respect) or he wouldn’t play. Most bands named for the lead singer do not stay intact for long, and Dokken didn’t either. After a few albums, George Lynch, the guitarist, left to pursue his own projects—Lynch Mob, if you’re wondering: they’re okay but they are, I am sad to say, no Dokken, but then neither was Don on his own. For sure, though, Don can sing. Or could sing. Judging from comments on YouTube in the past few years, his range has eroded, as happens to us all. After listening to Dokken for something like a hundred hours now, I can tell you he has a really quite melodic tone: there’s a lightness to his vocals that’s unusual for the genre. It feels like his voice is floating on the guitars.

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