Inside Paul K. and the Prayers new CD - Saratoga - cover
booklet, just above the credits, is a quote: "…and at that point the British
seemed to lose interest…". Those words clearly reference the battle of
Saratoga - in which Kopazs' fellow Kentuckian, Timothy Murphy, shot and killed British
General Simon Fraser, thus dispiriting the Queen's boys and leading the rag-tag Americans
to victory - a turning point in the American Revolution. Thus, the easy connections,
giving this record its name. But the quote holds more meaning.
Saratoga is the latest trip from Paul K. and his new band,
the Prayers, and K. is no longer alone in his beautiful, fucked-up, poetic, despotic,
angry, booze-drug-love-pain fueled world. Move on over pal, I'm your new neighbor.
I'm not sure why I connect to Paul K.'s music. It doesn't seem to be the kind of
thing you'd brag about, or choose, if life ever really gave you choices. But life
doesn't and I do.
Perhaps it was my Catholic upbringing (Paul K. suffered, or conceivably?
gained from, the same fate); perhaps it is the fact that I was adopted-at-birth, or maybe
just that I'm kind of fucked-up like so many of our invisible generation: The "no war
to name us" generation. It could be a multitude of things, but whatever it is
fate has put me at this time and place with Paul K. and his music - And I'm pretty fucking
gratified for it.
Those who are familiar with Kopasz (Paul K.'s given name) and his work
understand what I am talking about. The untutored and nervous need not move forward
from here.
Okay, now that I lost most of you, let's talk. Paul K. has been writing
the gospels of our time for over a decade. Although I, like many of you yet, took a
long time to discover this guy (it's really not your fault, so don't go berating yourself
…that comes later), the impact of his poetry is immediate and lasting. Like his
idols and predecessors; Bob Dylan, Townes Van Zandt, and, as is often the comparison, Lou
Reed, Kopasz creates music in treatise form. Enormous and epic tales of life, love,
love lost, and death (and it's many forms: death of spirit, death of intellect, death of
time, death of fun, and the death and resurrection of hope).
Coming at you like a guitar-wielding three minute novelist, Kopasz takes more
from the white-trash hopeful loser Linkhorn family of Nelson Algrens' A Walk On the
Wild Side than from Lou Reed's cross-dressing Kerouac-ian freaks of his "Walk
on the Wild Side" (and although Paul K. himself affirms his debt to Reed, I find the
comparison intellectually lazy). Kopasz sees and exposes the "big lie" in
the American Dream. Life, liberty, love (my addition), and the pursuit of happiness
is the "crooked game" he mourns in Saratoga's "1992/Snakes
Live In the Desert". But it doesn't start there. Oh no…Kopasz sets the
argument early. Right of the bat in fact: "They taught us things that we should do but never how / They said
that love would be enough to build a wall. / And they showed us everything / except the
heartache that it brings. / Makes you wonder if it matters much at all. / But the rules
that they taught us were all useless / and the stories that we heard were just lies"
Jeez, sounds bad huh? Well, it probably is. Think about it…
Paul K. wrote those words for the opening number of Saratoga - "On the
Floor", and they are not only an introduction, but also a manifesto. The
preamble for the disenfranchised; the people on the fringe of American life and culture
who realize that the American Dream actually has a script, and you'd better follow it or
be forgotten.
There are a lot of these kinds of people today. Probably more than any
era since the birth of this nation, when the fringes of social evolution set sail for what
would become the United States of America and conceived this country. The founders
were the dregs, the beautiful losers, the dreamers, and the lovers: Algrens' Linkhorns!
Then came the "incorporates". The Linkhorns found themselves, rather than
suffocating or being enslaved under the monetary blanket, wandering again. And they
still roam.
The dreamers in America still dream, but the tides have been sweeping them back to
those same grim shores for too many years. Paul K. is one of those dreamers, and Saratoga
finds him swimming against the shit tide. Kopasz sings about these people, and he
always has. Probably always will…someone has too.
Bruce Springsteen sang about these folks, if for only one brief album - Nebraska
- but that record, as revelatory as it was, only showed hopelessness and the darkest side
of the human heart. Kopasz opts for redemption, resurrection, and the chance to
exist in this world without the grim, downhearted despair of Nebraska's
characters. Paul K.'s music is hard and its protagonists are tired and nearly
defeated, but they are human. And like most of us, K.'s subjects seek comfort within
themselves to remove the stains of a vicious, heartless world. They discover that,
ultimately, even love - true love nonetheless - can end up being an "Artificial
Heart".
Yet, on Saratoga, Kopasz isn't giving up, hell he isn't even
despondent about things. He just gently shakes his head, realizing he's just another
player at the table and the house always wins. Paul K. and the Prayers seem to even
be having fun this time out. The rollicking arena boom of "They Just Don't Make
'Em Like They Used To" flavors the recording with a distinct (and dead on accurate)
Detroit AOR radio circa 1977 feel. "Airport Road" chugs along on piano, a
synthesized hum, sharp guitar and seductive lyricism. The back porch romp that is
"The Judge (on judgement day)" is positively sprightly. Kopasz also sing
to folks in whose hands he's put his heart: "1992/Snakes Live In The Desert" ("won't
you please recall / the writing on the wall / predicted both our fall / it was 1992 / this
road ain't wide enough for two"), "Artificial Heart" ("when
we said goodbye / you weren't very kind / and I cried"), "Once It
Happens" (both of them…K. has put two different songs, same title, back to
back), and "It's Gonna Rain On You" all deal with the pain of loving another.
In tribute to someone he loved dearly, Paul K. performs a gentle and
gorgeous "Harm's Swift Way": an unreleased Townes Van Zandt song. Kopasz
pays homage to the beloved late Texas poet in "That Perfect Spot", a robust
reprisal of the albums opener "On The Floor": "you taught me not each
single message has to rhyme / there is no need to put your soul in every line / you said
that God was to blame / as he was sitting out the game / and the punishment is covered by
the crime / and the truth, it ain't usually on the sign".
Saratoga is sharp work. Paul K. and the Prayers are
sharp folks. Kopasz ability to define his spiritual condition allows us, the
listeners, to "stand naked before the gods" and assess our own hearts.
And in the ugliness we may think we see - is humanity.
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