SEND IN THE CLOWNS:
Loudon Wainwright III

by Rob Brookman

Loudon Wainwright III might just be the finest writer working in pop music today. Unfortunately, he's also funny. Very funny.

And therein lies the problem.

Posterity just doesn't care much for humorists these days, and the marketplace is almost equally fickle. Just try to remember the last time a pure comedy film won the Oscar. Then see if you can find a James Thurber collection on the shelves of your local bookstore.

Clowns, it seems, are bankable in short term, but ultimately pass from memory. Laughter is transitory, misery endures.

Wainwright's career trajectory would seem to support that notion. His one top-20 fluke, Album III's unrepresentative "Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road," got him tagged as a novelty act after early billing as yet another "New Dylan." Predictably, a follow-up hit failed to appear, subsequent album sales dropped precipitously, and in the last quarter century he's busied himself earning what he describes as "a damn good living on the periphery of the music business."

My guess is, Wainwright's comedic abilities probably do help him fill the seats for his concert appearances, and doubtless play a big part in that damn good living he talks about. But they don't seem to be doing much for his back catalog or his reputation with the under-40 crowd. Among my friends, for example - many of whom are voracious music consumers - Wainwright's practically a nonentity. Most, if they know him at all, remember him from his appearances on "M.A.S.H." in the 70s.

It's irrelevant, I suppose, that his oeuvre - unhappy love, parenthood and the pitfalls of being a sonofabitch - has moved tons of product for many a lesser talent. Or that he's capable of penning a stanza so breathtaking it makes you wonder why other songwriters bother. Or that's he's a master of that most 90s of virtues, irony.

The unavoidable fact is, he's a funny man. He can't help it. And in this age of angst, funny equals disposable.

But Wainwright isn't - or shouldn't be - disposable. Unlike, say, Tom Lehrer, he's not a satirist and, aside from his occasional work for National Public Radio, his songs aren't especially topical. Although it's true he often plays his material for easy laughs in concert, on record - without the contorted faces and exaggerated phrasings - the songs display real emotional heft. Whether he's singing about a newborn daughter he chose (oddly) not to see for the first year of her life in "A Year" or enticing a roadie into bed with the promise of full ice buckets and clean sheets in "Motel Blues," there's an undercurrent of pain and regret that cuts through Wainwright's best work - even when he's trying his best not give a damn.

Admittedly, Wainwright's catalog isn't as epochal as, say, Randy Newman's, sometime-sideman Richard Thompson's or even his own ex-wife's. But his ability with the written word is so unerring, his simple sense of melody so developed and his one-man-and-a-guitar recording style so foolproof, he's never laid down a bad record. And most of them are pretty good.

Me, I generally prefer Wainwright's albums from the mid-70s and the work he's put out since the early 90s. But for neophytes, probably the single best place to discover him is 1993's Career Moves, an intimate, bare-bones live set that serves as a pretty fair showcase for the Wainwright canon. In fact, from the "Man Who Couldn't Cry" to "Thanksgiving," many of the songs receive their strongest recorded readings here, freed from the unsympathetic backing bands and unforgiving production that have occasionally marred his studio work.

From there, I'd head to 1972's Album III and it's freshly re-released follow-ups, Attempted Mustache and Unrequited. The trilogy serves as a kind of triptych to Wainwright's failed marriage to Kate McGarrigle, and generally get the artist's proclivities toward pain and pompous in just the right focus. From "Red Guitar" through to "Kick in the Head," these suites capture Wainwright's surprise, remorse and anger in response to the break-up - and before the series of subsequent break-ups that coarsened his lyrics and gave birth to the perennial cad on display in so many of his 80s songs.

A smattering of pretty good albums followed in the next 15 years - I'd recommend '87's More Love Songs and '89's Therapy to anyone who experiences a Wainwright conversion - but it was 1992's History that signaled a sea change. The album itself is better-than-average Wainwright, but a handful of excellent tracks like "Men" and "Hitting You" pointed to a less strident, wiser worldview, one that hits its stride on Career Moves, 1996's excellent and aptly named Grown Man, and last year's solid Little Ship.

In terms of studio material, Grown Man is probably Wainwright's best album since Unrequited nearly 20 years earlier. It's one of his most thematically diverse records and, yes, one of his funniest, too. But the best stuff is hardly funny at all. "That Hospital" is a tough and sad look at mortality, "The Birthday Present" a live-in-the-shower goof on aging and "Father/Daughter Dialogue" is a cutting critique of Wainwright's parenting skills that he sings with his daughter, Martha. Although Wainwright bobs and weaves around his self-penned accusations, Martha ultimately gets the K.O.: "You can't undo what has been done/To all your daughters and your son/The facts are in and we have found/That basically you're not around."

1999 is shaping up to be a busy year for Wainwright. On the heels of Little Ship and his two Columbia re-releases last year, he just signed a multi-album deal with Hannibal Records, he has a collection of the political songs he's written for National Public Radio hitting the stores in the fall, there's a new CD of his John Peel recordings available overseas and he's currently playing some dates with his ex-wife and her sister. Not bad for a guy on the periphery of the music business.

But the real test will be if any of this activity boosts his profile with the record-buying public. Another radio hit seems unlikely, as does widespread acceptance by the alternative nation. But Wainwright deserves to be more than a footnote in the pop music pantheon. And he certainly has something to say to my peers, the aging thirtysomething fringe of Generation X.

But, if it turns out that he never gets the chance, he'll still have his damn good living, his recording contract, an excellent back catalog and his small but committed cult following.

And the joke, ultimately, will be on us.