“Map Jeff” makes it all plain

The multi-talented Jeff Obser, whose meticulous hand-drawn map of Yelapa graces so many local walls, has mapped out another environment, the global psycho-consumer mart, in another medium, a series of biting 21st Century folksongs. “Song Noir,” the CD he has created and published with colleague Leslie Gore, (available through http://lacalifusa.jobservation.com/) evokes the spirit of the Sixties, when music was the binding force of a whole social movement. These songs skewer our new network society’s discontents with an amalgam of Dylan’s slashing attacks, Leonard Cohen’s playful irony, and Phil Ochs’s boldness, with a dash of the jaunty Tom Lehrer. We need more songs like these.

“Don’t let it end,” the first one, mocks the process of coping with media and the endless hawking of goods, so that

“Sometimes my Visa seems like my very best friend
I’ll do my best to pass the test, I’ll be my very own trend.”

“Psychopharmaceutical Lab Rat” enters the world where the psyche is regulated with drugs, legal and otherwise. “iLove” says it all about the Internet:

Browsing and browsing, a long day of mousing,
And jousting with folks I don’t know
Click and investing, to Congress protesting,
And festering ‘cause it’s so slow
I’m getting bleary but I’ll still be cheery
‘Cause there’s a deal from FTD
I send myself flowers and after an hour
Get one thousand air miles for free.

“Constructive Outlet” imagines the life of a hippie kid:

The rainforest was burning so my mother headed south
I walk myself to school now and I feed this hungry mouth
She’s one with the animals and rocks and plant and trees
I swear I’m gonna kill her when she gets back from Belize

“Not much about history” enters the fantasy world of the consumer, who expects

...nothing less than contentment of the shore
And low low prices at the store
Bought with credit cards galore

“Kill the Infidels” is an outright defiant song that imagines the life of an Iraqi under U.S. attack:

My name is Mustapha and I’m not well
I just received your shell – go to hell
You liberate my village by shutting off our fridge
Broadcast about freedom then blow up every bridge
Express total amazement that we’re pissed off just a smidge

These words are sometimes hard to make out on the disc, possibly because it was produced in the basement of a cafe. Fortunately the producer, La Califusa, provides lyrics to all of the songs in close print that one can read with any drugstore magnifying glass. It’s worth the pain; these are songs in which the words count, as relevant to these times as Dylan’s to his, sung in a rollicking good-timey style that carries you right along. The songs may be noir, but the music has spirit and wit that serve as a nice antidote to the dismaying scenes they describe.

-- Cliff Barney

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